2 June 2012

Duelling card reading parking machines

| johnboy
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Yesterday the Liberals took the bold step of promising $210,000 to install card reading parking machines.

This was swiftly followed by Andrew Barr promising to spend $300,000 on the exact same thing.

If only negligible sums could be spent on sensible things during the whole electoral cycle!

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I seem to recall on my various jaunts to ‘the real world’ that the airport (and Brindy Park) have credit card payment parking machines. So I imagine most of these issues already exist in Canberra.

We really need an Octopus card system. In HK you buy a card (its something like a $10 deposit) and then load it up as required (and you can load it up almost anywhere). You can then use it for trains, trams, buses, taxis, parking (not that anyone drives), ferries and at the 7-11s and similar and most vending machines. Sure its virtually a credit card, but at most you are up for the amount you have loaded up on your card so it does have that security benefit. Plus coins become unecessary.

Changing away from coins to cards is a big step forward. Having to carry $8 in change each day is a heavy responsibility for your pocket or purse. And; if they did not have coins in them then there would be less vandalism by druggies and less need to pay people to drive around constantly collecting from the machines.

bd84 said :

I would expect the machines will have chip readers, not swipe readers, which would vastly reduce the chances of fraud occurring. Parking fees are determined once a year, I doubt they would be changing any differently to they are now. The use of a credit card with a chip would be vastly more secure than a flimsy MyWay card, which I suspect would have very little security surrounding the data contained on it.

I also find it reprehensible that Labor are now trying to play catch-up with these sort of policies now and only because there is an election coming up. It they had any idea about meeting the needs of the voters, these machines would have been implemented many years ago, like most other places in the western world.

You don’t know too much about card technology if you think that Myway’s are flimsy and not very secure. As someone else mentioned they are far more ‘secure’ than a pure credit card alone in the application proposed for the simple fact that it is a two step process to get to the source of the money. Ie what you can ‘steal’ from a link bank account is very minimal and what you can buy with a my way is also very minimal. Even by allowing use in shops like Hong Kong’s Octopus card the exposure would be so small for it to not be of a concern.

As for chip card technology, when these things first came out a good 10 years or so back (in countries other than Australia) they were touted as virtually uncrackable and when I lived in the UK banks could somehow legally refuse to accept any claim for fraud on them for this reason. However a court case circa 2007/2008 changed all that.

As for the policies, you do seem to forget that when Myway first came out parking was one area where ACT Labor said they would look into expanding it, so hardly a case of playing catch up is it? And besides if this is the extend of the Liberal transport policy it is very weak indeed!

screaming banshee5:18 pm 03 Jun 12

I haven’t read it but I’m going to leap headlong into an assumption that they are all for something that they could make money out of. Who would have thought.

Local mobile phone payment service provider mHITs has issued a response to the Government announcements. Paying for parking by SMS sounds like a great idea! See their media release: http://www.mhitslimited.com/smart-parking-initiatives-welcomed

I have no love for most of the policies of the Liberals, but spending $210,000 on actual machines sounds better than spending $300,000 on a “study” that may or may not result in more convenient payment methods.

I’d put money on the fact that once it is in place there will be no discounted pre-payment methods offered any more either.

For the money I’d like them to find and sack the person who thought it was a good idea to make some parking machines charge $1 for one hour but $3 for 2 hours!

screaming banshee1:07 pm 03 Jun 12

No a far simpler solution would be e-tag readers

Far simplier approach would be just have a Pin code that linked to an online payment system.

Walk upto parking pay station and key in your account/pin (likely one string of a few numbers) and it checks your balance online and prints a ticket. Similar to myway but you wouldnt need the semi expensive myway car or card readers. Nor the retailers to sell them.

ampersand said :

Y’all actually are kidding me with your comments aren’t you? I realize you all probably work in public service policy paradise, but for you to applaud a government action that makes a huge dent in public funds; for the sole purpose of assisting you pay a a tax, highlights how out of sync you are with the rest of Australia.

Why aren’t you instead raising a more valid point of highlighting how 200k could be better used lowering parking fees, or .. better yet… campaigning or writing to our electorate to abolish paid parking altogether. If I didn’t loathe most of the comments the whingers of Canberra put on here at the start, I sure do now.

Where was the opportunity for public comment on such a trial as well? What a waste.

And if it wasn’t obvious enough how bad my computer-ese is – this quote was meant for http://the-riotact.com/liberals-promise-card-machines-for-parking/74235#comments forum.

Y’all actually are kidding me with your comments aren’t you? I realize you all probably work in public service policy paradise, but for you to applaud a government action that makes a huge dent in public funds; for the sole purpose of assisting you pay a a tax, highlights how out of sync you are with the rest of Australia.

Why aren’t you instead raising a more valid point of highlighting how 200k could be better used lowering parking fees, or .. better yet… campaigning or writing to our electorate to abolish paid parking altogether. If I didn’t loathe most of the comments the whingers of Canberra put on here at the start, I sure do now.

Where was the opportunity for public comment on such a trial as well? What a waste.

The card reading car parking machines I’ve used elsewhere just read the magnetic stripe, but they don’t ask for a pin number so they’re not a target for the usual scammers that target ATMs as the credit card numbers by themselves are not that valuable for the risk involved.

Without pin numbers the car park owner just takes the risk that they won’t get the money for any fraudulent use, and given that the amounts are quite low it seems to be working for them elsewhere.

Some car parks have an even better feature where you let the system read your credit card on entry. On exit you insert your credit card instead of a ticket (which you don’t get on entry since it read your CC) and it charges you at the exit gate. No more having to line up at the machines to pay.

c_c said :

Deckard said :

c_c said :

The credit card option also opens up the prospect of fraud. It’s hard enough policing ATMs against card sniffing much less thousands of parking machines. No doubt it won’t take long for a gang to set up some sniffers, park across the road and watch the info role in. Different story though if they set up the machines for MyWay instead.

It would be easier for the crooks to go to any other city in the civilised world where they actually have had these machines installed for most of this century.

Not sure about easier elsewhere, it’s exceptionally easy to set up a sniffing system with the right gear so I’d be more concerned about some local mob assembling something than people actually coming to Canberra to do it. Some local ATMs have been targeted in the past so can’t rule anything out though.

At least with MyWay and mobile phone payments, your using an intermediary rather than the raw payment details so its safer.

Recent case in NZ where several thousand credit cards had to be replaced after a suspect Russian gang targeted just one pay parking station.

I would expect the machines will have chip readers, not swipe readers, which would vastly reduce the chances of fraud occurring. Parking fees are determined once a year, I doubt they would be changing any differently to they are now. The use of a credit card with a chip would be vastly more secure than a flimsy MyWay card, which I suspect would have very little security surrounding the data contained on it.

I also find it reprehensible that Labor are now trying to play catch-up with these sort of policies now and only because there is an election coming up. It they had any idea about meeting the needs of the voters, these machines would have been implemented many years ago, like most other places in the western world.

Deckard said :

c_c said :

The credit card option also opens up the prospect of fraud. It’s hard enough policing ATMs against card sniffing much less thousands of parking machines. No doubt it won’t take long for a gang to set up some sniffers, park across the road and watch the info role in. Different story though if they set up the machines for MyWay instead.

It would be easier for the crooks to go to any other city in the civilised world where they actually have had these machines installed for most of this century.

Not sure about easier elsewhere, it’s exceptionally easy to set up a sniffing system with the right gear so I’d be more concerned about some local mob assembling something than people actually coming to Canberra to do it. Some local ATMs have been targeted in the past so can’t rule anything out though.

At least with MyWay and mobile phone payments, your using an intermediary rather than the raw payment details so its safer.

Recent case in NZ where several thousand credit cards had to be replaced after a suspect Russian gang targeted just one pay parking station.

c_c said :

The credit card option also opens up the prospect of fraud. It’s hard enough policing ATMs against card sniffing much less thousands of parking machines. No doubt it won’t take long for a gang to set up some sniffers, park across the road and watch the info role in. Different story though if they set up the machines for MyWay instead.

It would be easier for the crooks to go to any other city in the civilised world where they actually have had these machines installed for most of this century.

I suspect this could backfire rather badly on whichever party ends up implementing it. Offering payment methods not dependant on coins will make it so much easier to jack up rates, no doubt something that would be done (and encouraged by the Greens) under a cloak of environmentalism.

The credit card option also opens up the prospect of fraud. It’s hard enough policing ATMs against card sniffing much less thousands of parking machines. No doubt it won’t take long for a gang to set up some sniffers, park across the road and watch the info role in. Different story though if they set up the machines for MyWay instead.

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