Officials in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario say it's not a case of "Big Brother" that you have to register your car license number to use municipal parking spaces. The town has installed 55 state-of-the-art parking machines which it uses to control parking lots, like the one adjacent to the historic Court House in the center of the tourist area. When you want to buy parking time, the solar-powered machine asks for your car license number and then delays and reports the number is validated before allowing purchase of parking time.
Town Communications Coordinator Dawn McInnis says the parking machine checks for records of unpaid parking tickets.
She says the license numbers are not run past police and the license plate numbers are not stored. McInnis says the machines are supposed to help travelers.
"They're really designed to be much more convenient for the visitor, in that they can actually take their time with them now, rather than just being stuck with one meter or one location. It's actually much more mobile. People can purchase their time and can move their vehicles around, regardless of where they park," McInnis says.
That convenience is supposed to also eliminate those printouts which sit on the dashboard to report parking has been paid for, since enforcement officers have the license plates of parked cars in that register.
