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Roermond Council, like every other council in The Netherlands, issues penalties for parking and other offenses. This is the everyday task of the traffic wardens working for the Municipal Traffic Department.
The Problem
Roermond wanted to modernize and automate its method of issuing penalties. In the past, wardens at the Traffic Department carried coupon books, from which they issued penalties for parking and other offenses. At the end-of-day all the data has to be transferred to a list manually.
To automate the process, the Roermond Council needed a portable and lightweight system with which the officers could easily issue the penalties. Roermond didn’t want just to be able to issue penalties for parking offenses, but also for other traffic offenses and misdemeanors.
The Solution
Roermond defined the options for mobile issuing of penalties, and chose Parkmate and Sigmax to implement their solution. This system with HP iPAQ and Datamax-O’Neil portable printers is small, easy to handle and store.
The wardens at Roermond Council do much more than issue parking fines: they are versatile and perform many different activities. The iPAQ and portable printer don’t obstruct these activities like larger systems would. It was also essential that the new enforcement application could be integrated with the existing “Tobias” computerized system and their “Centric” penalty processing system.
When an offense is established, the warden gets the PDA and decides what type of penalty he will impose. For a parking offense, for example, he chooses the place of the offense (first three letters of the street name) and enters precise information on the location and type of offense. Then he enters the data on the vehicle. If the driver is present, the warden fills in the identification data of the person. The warden prints out the penalty on the compact printer and gives the report to the offender or leaves it under the wipers.
This system with HP iPAQ and Datamax-O’Neil portable printers is small, easy to handle and store. The wardens at Roermond Council do much more than issue parking fines: they are versatile and perform many different activities.
– Roermond Council
The Results
At the end of the working day the warden synchronizes the PDA with the computer at the central office. All penalties are transferred to the central penalty system. Penalties in the system can still be dropped. In Roermond, they are stored for seven days. The system then automatically selects where and how the penalties are processed further, depending on the working method of the Council. In Roermond the fine collection reports are transferred to Centric and the rest to the police Tobias system. The penalties are processed further by these systems.
- The wardens no longer make mistakes in issuing penalties for parking meter offences. All parking zones and times for paid parking are stored in the PDA.
- The wardens can check the parking permit of a car directly.
- The wardens can simply issue fines for later collection, and offences from the “facts book”.
- If a motorist has not paid a previous penalty and commits a further offence with his car, the warden sees that he is in default of payment and the car can be wheel-clamped.
- With the automatic penalty processing system, all the administration work is done at once: the administration is complete when the penalty is issued.
- In Roermond, 15 wardens are using this system. Because they no longer have to do their administrative work “indoors”, the citizens see 1.5 times more wardens on the road.
