20 April 2016

Abuse of the three for free parking

| damianheffernan
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After hearing about it for ages I recently witnessed the abuse of the three for free parking in Civic and I must say it looks a little out of control to me.

Scenarios: A car pulls up with one guy in it. He parks and then jumps in a car with two others. They do a loop of the block and get a three for free voucher. They then jump in another car, go round the block and get another voucher. Repeat for the final car.

I’ve seen people phone and a Public servant comes out of a building and jumps in a car and they drive and get a voucher. The person called may not have even driven in but helps the others get a freebie.

People actually drive up to you in the carpark and ask if you wouldn’t mind jumping in with them for a circle of the block to help them get a free pass.

Now I think not only does this defeat the purpose: i.e. you are supposed to car pool and stop three cars driving into Civic therby saving the environment and the demand on parking spaces, but it also is fraud.

Where’s the cluey Parking Inspector hiding in the bushes and then slamming all the unpaid for cars while the guys drive around the block. A $70 fine would have paid for a few of those freebie days.

Where also is the guy in the booth saying “hey I just saw you guys 15 seconds ago in another car?!”

Thoughts?

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Hdopler said :

Good idea, will be used in the future to great effect – do children in the car count?

Children do count. Yay the Rights of the Child!

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy said :

Is it ethical? Probably not. But there are bigger problems in the world (and in Canberra) than this.

So … it’s okay if I punch babies? I mean, there are heaps bigger problems in the world (and Canberra) than one solitary person punching some babies.

Good idea, will be used in the future to great effect – do children in the car count?

tylersmayhem1:34 pm 29 Sep 08

Paying to park your car for work is wrong

Yes it sucks – but you can hardly say it’s wrong Axe Man. Where do you draw the line? I mean, I hate having to buy suits to wear to work (as I NEVER wear them outside work) and dry clean them. It kinda sucks having to pay for petrol when I drive to work. Based on your logic, really everything work related should be free?!

My usual response: catch the bus or ride a bike!

In contradiction to my first comment on this post – it’s actually really crap people doing this, more for the point of taking up parking spots which should be available if everyone did the right thing. The amount of parking in the city is more of a problem than the cost in my opinion (underground parking not included in my statement – way too much $$$).

We used to do this.
Someone would get a call in the office and he’d grab a couple of guys and go down, jump in the car and park.
A little later same thing would happen.
Paying to park your car for work is wrong

Woody Mann-Caruso9:25 am 29 Sep 08

What a bunch of tightarses.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy8:53 am 29 Sep 08

The big question is whether people doing this are even breaking any rules. Don’t the rules state that you need to turn up with 3 people in your car? If you do that, then it’s all good. It’s worth remembering that the people having to pay aren’t the ones making the rules, they’re just trying to get what they can from the system.

Is it ethical? Probably not. But there are bigger problems in the world (and in Canberra) than this.

tylersmayhem8:26 am 29 Sep 08

Well…I figure if these 3 “geniuses” can be bothered going to such lengths, then hats off to them. Although, karma always seems to even the score eventually I’ve found. Kinda keeps me pretty honest these days.

As for the gripes with paid parking, I agree it sucks – but keep in mind that we pay surprisingly low daily parking rates in Canberra compared to place like Sydney & Melbourne. While you can argue that you can hardly compare – but then again, Canberra seems to be in a light speed rush to loose it’s small city feel and catch up with the big boys.

On this topic – I think the sheer lack of parking is more my spew.

Excellent scam,

Stick it to the fascist nazi pig swill eating parking inspectors that haunt the windswept barren streets of the now faded and dilapidated civic.

Actually, I have nothing against parking inpsectors but I thought it sounded rather good 😉

Thumper, it does sound rather good indeed ! Nice Rant.

All well said then done…

To give them a ticket then the parking inspector is going to need some pretty hard evidence as they need to collect everything on site to take to court if it should get that far. How could the parking inspector prove that the 2 additional people didn’t get picked up from there homes? He would need to follow them from there homes and be able to identify the persons…. It’s not going to happen.

For the people in the car – they don’t need to prove anything.

It’s not the parking voucher persons fault or the gumberments fault it’s the people that are coming out of their office to get into the car – they’re the ones that should be ashamed of themselves.

Hahahaha that’s brilliant, those who go through the fore thought and organisation to carry this out to circumvent a stupid rule deserve the cheap parking. Here’s a lesson it’s all about revenue raising everyone it has nothing to do with your pollution, it has nothing to do with public transport it has nothing to do with the square root of your car engine size divided by the multiple of each passengers age divided by the number of passengers in a direct ratio with the actual car space used.

It’s about revenue and obviously worked out so only a limited few people would utilise it. I’m sure if everyone turned up with 3 passengers someone would scratch their head and go where’s all our money gone? Let’s scrap this rule and charge an extra $3 per car.

Two words….. REVenue

Yes I’m a cynic. Nice work to those who use the system to benefit themselves for a change I hope this inspires more.

on occasion i – legitimately – utilise the 3-for-free carpark in civic. about 3-6months ago, the dude in the booth, where you collect your display voucher from, started writing your car number plate on the display voucher. i assume this was to prevent some sort of fraud – like maybe doing loops of the carpark and collecting numerous vouchers for your mates to collect later on when they drove in by themselves and wanted some free parking.

the reasons for 3-for-free? to cut down on traffic on the road, and pollution from people driving in alone when they could (as 3-for-free usage proves) carpool, lessen the load on public transport etc etc – don’t pretend you are doing a noble act by rorting the system.

I bet OP was the kid in primary school who would ask the teacher for homework if she forgot to set some.

i’m sure this has been going on for many years, probably less now that the only availability of it is for carparks nowhere near anything. I have no problems with people doing it, it’s going to be a filled carpark either way, if most people were able to organise it they would probably do the same thing.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy9:14 pm 28 Sep 08

I have one of those jobs where it’s expected I have my own car. So buses aren’t an option, although I car pool with Mrs Berlina 3 days a week…

Assuming that making parking more expensive will stop people driving will only go so far. For professionals like myself, we will just pad our bills to govt some more to cover the extra cost.

‘it’ refers to a nice new expensive ticket machine.

remove ‘it’… what’s ‘it’ here – free or paid parking?

if too many people scam the system, they [whoever ‘they’ are] will tighten it up and factor in the new cost of enforcement so ‘it’ becomes even more expensive.

and vy’s figures are nearly right – most people get four weeks hols, + about a week or so more in public holidays; but you then have to factor in the cost of running the vehicle and suddenly buses, bikes and/or shanks pony becomes enticing. even car pooling.

now i know there are many who require cars ’cause they live in certain locales / have extraneous needs like kids, shiftwork, etc / and such like – but i wonder just what percentage of the cars commuting each morning really need to be there…

They will just remove it for everyone if people continually take advantage of the system.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy8:03 pm 28 Sep 08

This just says says to me that we need to get parking sorted.

Think about it:
$7 a day
5 days a week
50 weeks a year

equals $1750 after tax. Pre tax equivalent of nearly $2500 a year. 5% of an average wage. No wonder people have an issue with paid parking!

Jonathon Reynolds6:07 pm 28 Sep 08

A much cleverer scam is with Park’n’Ride which results in the equivalent of concessional parking rates:
http://www.action.act.gov.au/park_n_ride.html

You go buy yourself a Monthly Adult ticket for $82.00. Assuming 20 working days a month this works out at little more than $4.10 for all day parking – generally cheaper than other pay parking available.

Whilst ACTION claims that they reserve the right to confirm the work location of the Park’n’Ride applicant, under privacy legislation they are actually unable to do so.

Pay parking is pain in the ass

arse. an ass is an animal similar to a donkey. i can’t see why you’d park a donkey for free with three people and if three people were riding it, either they’re animal cruelty practitioners or its jesus with the folks… either way, s’no wonder it has a pain.

in australia, we say ‘arse’.

as for the scam, pay parking is designed to encourage alternative transport – the ‘vast expanses’ don’t enter into it and this reprehensible behaviour ought to be stamped out. maybe patrols on donkeys by inspectors would work?

or simply stamping wrists like nightclubs – how hard is that?

Vic Bitterman5:23 pm 28 Sep 08

I see nothing wrong with this.

Pay parking is an insidious expense in Canberra, with our vast expanses of land for parking.

I refuse to pay for parking at every opportunity I get, as does everyone else I know.

The builders on one site hear where I was doing some work made a meal out of this. While listening to the radio (RN, breakfast – I’m old), I saw the same two hazard-vested passengers arrive three times in different vehicles.

My guess is that many bits of the public sector would lack the organisational skills …

You’ve just encouraged a whole heap of people to have a go at this. Well done !

Loquaciousness5:15 pm 28 Sep 08

I think that, considering the effort some people are (apparently) going to just to get seven bucks a day off, they should be left to it. Good on them for ingenuity and lateral thinking!

L

Considering the amount of work you describe in order to carry out this scam, I don’t think the problem would be widespread.

must be a slow news day.

life is full of loopholes that deserve exploiting.

if the abuse of ‘3 for three’ was even slightly close to being an issue worth caring about, that loophole would have been closed by now.

that it continues to occur is testament to the fact that no one cares.

ironic too that even more people will be doing this on monday as a result of this post.

hetzjagd1 said :

I think you should ignore it and not interfere with the affairs others. Pay parking is pain in the ass and not everyone has the option to carpool.

I think you should leave those carparks to the people who deserve it.

Its next to the Civic pool.

I think you should ignore it and not interfere with the affairs others. Pay parking is pain in the ass and not everyone has the option to carpool.

gooterz said :

Theres 3 for free in civic?

lol i thought the same thing!

Theres 3 for free in civic?

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