Roermond Council, like every other council in the Netherlands, issues penalties for parking offences and other offences. This is the everyday task of the Traffic Wardens of the Municipal Traffic Department.
Coupon book full
In the past, wardens at the Traffic Department carried coupon books, with which they issued penalties for parking offences and other offences. The offender was given the fine or notification and the copy was taken back to the office. There all the data had to be transferred to a list. This list was checked and finally typed into the Tobias system. A huge administrative task: the total processing of the fines issued took almost 10% of working time.
Roermond Council preferences
Roermond wanted to modernise and automate its method of issuing penalties. For this it needed a portable lightweight system with which the officers could easily issue the penalties. Roermond didn't want just to be able to issue penalties for parking offences, but also for other traffic offences and misdemeanours from the "facts book" of the Public Ministry, known as the VECOM book.
Easy to carry, easy to use
Roermond defined the options for mobile issuing of penalties, and chose the Parkmate and Sigmax solution. This system with HP iPAQ and portable printer is small, easily 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 system and for example the His4All by Centric (a penalty processing system).
New working method with PDA
When an offence is established, the warden gets the PDA and decides what type of penalty he will impose.
For a parking offence, for example, he chooses the place of the offence (first three letters of the street name) and enters precise information on the location and type of offence.
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.
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.
More wardens on the street
Roermond Council has found the following benefits:
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.
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