DEPECHE INFO. Controlling paid parking in Toulouse: the arrival of on-board cameras
Toulouse will equip vehicles with cameras to control paid parking. Which should increase the pressure on motorists.
Parking revolution in sight in Toulouse. During the city council of this Friday, October 22, elected officials will vote on a deliberation which plans to move to automated control of paid parking in the streets. Clearly, cameras will equip “four to five vehicles”, according to the deliberation that we have read, which will crisscross the city at low speed to read license plates and check whether parking has been paid for. With this system, already adopted by other cities, such as Paris, Marseille, Lille or Montpellier, Toulouse, which has been thinking about it for several years and had already announced the color, is giving itself the means to improve control with Toulouse residents rather little concerned about parking meters.
The town hall, which does not want to communicate on this subject before the municipal council, will have to say at what rate it intends to run its cars. She will no doubt be keen to defend herself from wanting to bludgeon motorists. However, the automated reading of the plates, because it makes it possible to accelerate the pace, appears as the lethal weapon.
Majority fraudsters
In a few years, the people of Toulouse, kings of parking fraud, there have been several developments. In 2016, the regional chamber of accounts pinned down the town hall for its low level of control of ten minutes per day. The twenty agents then increased to around thirty. Then in 2018, the PV at 17 €, little dissuasive, became a “post-parking package” at 30 €. While only 17% of motorists paid, this proportion rose to 30%, indicated the town hall during a report in 2019. That is two-thirds who still do not pay …
In the deliberation which will be presented by Emilion Esnault, deputy mayor for security, no commissioning date has been brought forward. It is a question of a “preparatory work” to provide for exemptions, then of a test phase.
Basically, the text explains that with the growing number of residential areas, and therefore of paid places, – 16,300 today against 12,600 in 2019-, the means must be accumulated. And that it is a question of “diversifying” the missions of the 33 surveillance agents, in particular to control the blue zones which are also multiplying. The deliberation, which plans an investment of 204,000 €, recalls that the objective is to obtain a “good turnover rate” of vehicles to improve the availability of the premises.
Extended video over-tagging
The pressure on offending motorists will be identified by another means: the generalization throughout the perimeter of Toulouse of videotape as well as the extension of its field of application. Introduced in October 2016, video traffic marking has so far been limited to the perimeter of the city center, within the boulevards, and inconvenient and very inconvenient parking, that is to say parking on a sidewalk, in double file, etc. From the security PC of the municipal police, agents, through the cameras of the city, observe the offense and draw up a fine with the relevant registration. Each year, 11,000 PV are thus dressed.
During the city council on Friday, the majority will propose to extend this device from December, the validity of the current prefectural decrees ending in November. The town hall wants to be sanctioned, in addition to inconvenient and very inconvenient parking, traffic violations. The deliberation lists: urban rodeos, “runs”, “overflows of festive processions” and “bad behavior of two-wheeled professionals”. And this throughout the entire perimeter of the Pink City, at least in places visible from the 454 network cameras. These offenses do not wish to be arrested: it is the owner of the vehicle registration card who will receive the fine. The “development of incivilities to two or four streets”, it is written, encouraged the town hall to take this provision.