One year on from introducing clamping in the capital, Dublin Corporation is planning to expand the operation to cover late-night hours and push deeper into suburban areas.
A number of city centre locations have been earmarked for "out-of-hours" clamping to add to Temple Bar where there has been such enforcement on Thursday and Friday nights since the initiative was launched in the first week of August last year.
The corporation has also distributed new leaflets detailing parking restrictions to more than 140,000 Dublin homes in preparation for further "blitzes" on the suburbs. It intends to extend the use of clamping to crack down on illegal parking over a wider area of the city, and outside the traditional hours of enforcement.
Mr Neil Cunningham, Dublin Corporation's parking enforcement officer, said it wished to reinforce the idea that there was no safe time to park illegally. "We are at liberty to clamp at any time," he said. In the first year, the operation was run at a loss of £500,000 with £3 million going out in contract fees for the UK-based company Control Plus, which runs the service, and £2.5 million coming back in from clamping and towing fines. However, there has been a spin-off benefit with revenue from parking metres doubling from £3.5 million in 1998 to an estimated £7-£8 million this year.
A total of 20,558 vehicles were clamped since August last, or about two an hour during business hours six days a week. A further 4,947 vehicles were towed since the removal service was introduced in mid-October 1998.
The rate of appeal has decreased steadily from 10 per cent of fines to about 5 per cent at present. A total of 1,914 fines were appealed, of which only 196 were successful.
Mr Cunningham said the vast majority of these refunds were due to mitigating circumstances on the part of motorists rather than clamping errors. He said the local authority had fully resolved signage problems which were highlighted earlier this year by traffic wardens unhappy at their proposed move from the Department of Justice to the corporation.
A number of motorists received refunds because of ambiguous or badly placed parking signs.
Among the areas being targeted in the new late-night clampdown are Dawson Street, South Great George's Street and King Street South. "We have already started issuing warning notices in those areas, after identifying a lot of illegal parking on footpaths and double yellows arising from social activity," said Mr Cunningham.
In order to discourage people from driving home after the pub, the corporation is to introduce a new pre-payment facility enabling motorists to buy next-day parking in pay-and-display areas. The initiative, due to be launched before the end of this month, will mean motorists can wait until 10 a.m. the following day before retrieving their cars.
In a separate development, the corporation recently published leaflets in French, Italian, German and Spanish to inform tourists of the capital's parking laws. The literature is being distributed through car-hire outlets.
Meanwhile, Dublin's motorists remain divided over the merits of the operation. While undoubtedly it has reduced levels of illegal parking in the city, it is unclear whether clamping has helped to shorten the traffic jams.
Mr Cunningham said the enforcement of parking laws "is not going to noticeably reduce congestion, but it will reduce the amount of illegal parking which impacts on traffic-flow, such as parking in loading bays which can lead to double parking".
He added that motorists had benefited from the revenue generated by clamping and associated operations which had been "ring-fenced" for traffic-calming and management initiatives. Revenue from the first year went towards upgrading the corporation's control centre, installing new cameras and introducing the radio information service Travel FM, for which it is seeking a permanent licence. The enforcement initiative has made it easier to find parking in the city, according to Mr Declan Martin, economic director of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce. Apart from a few isolated complaints of "over-zealousness" on the part of clampers, businesses had overwhelmingly welcomed the operation, he said.
Indeed, 85 per cent of businesses which responded to a chamber survey said clamping was an effective way of enforcing parking regulations, and 81 per cent said the £65 fine was fair.
A spokesman for the AA, which had originally opposed the initiative, said it had worked well although there should be some minor adjustments. For instance, "cars in parking bays whose time has expired should not be clamped straight away but should be ticketed first, and given an hour before being clamped".
