A new cashless payment trial gets underway at Oxford City Council’s Gloucester Green car park from 24 January.
It marks the start of the next stage of the City Council’s going cashless initiative and is the first step towards going cashless at all of Oxford city’s car parks.
The City Council approved the move to going cashless for all its services in February 2021. Since then, work has been ongoing to eradicate cash payment across council services.
The Gloucester Green Trial
To ensure Oxford’s car parks can run smoothly using a cashless operation, the City Council, along with ODS, will conduct the trial at Gloucester Green, lasting for six months from 24 January.
With the facility for cash payments removed, payment at the car park’s machines can be made using cards. Alternative payment methods remain available – through RingGo, the pay-by-phone provider or Hozah, the automatic payment provider.
The trial will enable the City Council to monitor customers’ reactions to the changes and to provide an indication of the way towards cashless implementation at other City Council car parks. A change to a cashless system across all sites would see an annual saving of around £12,000.
If the trial is successful, the Council may change all its car parks to cashless payments. The trial will not affect car parking run by other operators, for example, at the Westgate or the County Council’s on-street parking places.
The City Council will install new signage at Gloucester Green car park to ensure no users are inconvenienced and that other nearby car parks that retain cash payments are available.
For more information on Oxford City Council’s plans for going cashless, visit the going cashless page.
Comment
“More and more services are becoming available only through cashless systems. Already, 93 per cent of payments at our Gloucester Green car park are cashless.
“The vast majority of users are paying for parking by card at the pay machine, our pay by phone provider RingGo, or through Hozah the automatic payment provider.
“Overall, we have seen an increase in cashless payment throughout the pandemic as it is a convenient and quick way to pay. Additionally, contactless payments have been shown to reduce virus transmission, though non-contactless card payments will remain available.
“For the Council, this represents a way to reduce administrative costs across our car parks – a welcome factor at a time when our finances are stretched to the limit.”
—Councillor Tom Hayes. Cabinet Member for Green Transport and Zero Carbon Oxford
