Hamish Riach - Council Chat

ADC boss Hamish Riach was in to talk the new parking enforcement camera car trial 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Morning, Council Boss, Hamish Reek morning. You're not at Eddington.
I'm a burden, but you're still looking good. You've got
the fascinator in the can.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
My fascinator is not in the right okay, just.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
The one, the one that's missing. Yeah, yeah, I was
on the prize. It's going to be a big day there.
Looking forward to catching up with Mark and for his picks,
including the Dominion race, which, as I understand is ironically
the Trotting Cup isn't for Trotter's for something called pacers.
So I'm key to find out what the difference is
there with me.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I think, but in which it goes in which order,
but anyway will be able to answer.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
The hovel is my default state, so maybe I would
fit in there too. Hey something I was keen to
talk to you about. It's been spotted in the local
preests over the past week. We've got this new parking
camera car rolling around town.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yes, so we're trialing a car with a mounted camera
which will photograph car in the in the parks and
can read the number plate and assess once it gets
that information whether that car continues to be legally parked.
So a way of we're going to trial. The number
of councils around the country have already started using this

(01:15):
automatic sort of parking management systems. So we're going to
give it a guard and see.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
What do you mean by automatic? Does it drive itself?

Speaker 2 (01:21):
No right now, but the information that it takes a
photo and can assess itself whether or not the car
is legally or and as the car goes around, it
can check the time that it's, how long it's been there,
et cetera.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Sol oh okay, So it's not just scanning number plates,
but it's also looking at how you parked in the
space and exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
So it's doing essentially the same job as as as
the parking officer that walks around.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
And in fact, the.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
First part of the trial is to run both in tandem,
and the car won't be issuing any tickets because it's
just a trial, but we can compare the data with
what the parking officers see on the ground to see
just how accurate is and whether it's something you want.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
So this trial runs for six months. The car is
not going to be issuing tickets in that time.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
No, in the trials and two parts. So the first
part is to assess it threaturacy compared to the parking
offices that are doing that still doing the job. And
then the second part of the trial is the admint part.
Just how does it work in the back office? How
does it produce tickets if it was to be the
system to do so?

Speaker 1 (02:24):
I guess one of the concerns on the surface Hamish
reac because this is going to cost people some jobs.
So are we going to see the end of the
meet wardens?

Speaker 2 (02:31):
No, not the intention at all. The car still needs
to be driven and of course we've still got to
check the admin in the in the in the back office.
So certainly a potential change, but not not lost jobs.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Possibly adding jobs.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Well maybe we need to we need to get the
trial underway and just see how it looks. But there's
some good reasons to do the trial. In my head,
there's at.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Least what I was going to ask about that it
seems awfully trail blazing for a small place like Ashburton.
I wouldn't consider that we have that much of an
issue with parking. Why are we doing this?

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah? So two major benefits. One is we've all received
parking tickets in our life and we've all felt bad
about getting those Some people cross the line and have
a real go at our parking offices and it's ugly.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Angry really here in Ashburton. Here in ashburga oh Man.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
And I worry about some of those exchanges, and we're
putting our staff in some position of risk. They can
be really nasty exchanges. All they're doing is their job
and if the person hadn't parked illegally, they wouldn't be
having the conversation yet somehow because they regret getting the ticket,

(03:48):
it's our parking office's fault.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
So this is way to monitor from a distance.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, so there's a safety issue. But the second thing
is there's also a whole lot of data that we
can get from the cars driving around around parking pass
So where are the stress points for the parking where
the whereas there is that hole?

Speaker 1 (04:05):
It we wagon in the same space.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Again Yeah, yeah, well more more at an aggregate level
than just the one car. But yes, you know there
are the areas that are where there's yeah, there's issues
of congestion. Are the areas that are vacant? Are the
timing right now? If there's a lot of tickets in
one area, does that mean perhaps the parking time limit
isn't isn't quite right, whatever the issue is, But we

(04:28):
can find a whole lot of data that's much more
easily aggregated from an automatic system.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
This is just for the CBD. Yeah, is it going
to be rolling through the lakes of the wet street
car park?

Speaker 2 (04:38):
And yeah, we're going to do the trial and just
see how it works. And then there's but if you
think about a car, you can drive it to Methan,
you can drive it to Rakaia. You can. Yeah, but
we've got to find out about the system first. But
as I say, there are a number of other councils

(04:58):
already use this technology for all the same reasons that
we're looking at it.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
But based on that too. One more final quick question,
but a concern that will this thing be slow? Will
hold traffic up and cause some congestion?

Speaker 2 (05:10):
No, but it might force people following it to do
the speed limit in town? What are you looking at
me for thinking about your building here and it's ten
kilometers an hour outside you're building here?

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, that we narrow alleyway.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah, certainly times when PEPs vehicles aren't doing exactly ten. Now,
I certainly know because we experienced it as well at
the Bearing square. They're not doing ten, just by an observation.
Certainly times when I think thirty gets stretched a bit
and eas street and night as well, so our vehicle
will be not exceeding the speed limit, but they won't

(05:48):
be crawling along and holding people up.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Look forward to keeping tabs on this trial. Hamus react