During our recent visit to the South American capital, we were able to witness the operation of a payment by e-tag in a large shopping centre car park. The system has been recently installed and the owner is expecting that use will increase very fast from a currently low 2% to around 40% of transactions.
The agreement with the state controlled provider of the tags for payment on the country’s highways took a long time to complete; now, tag users can enter and exit the car park without the need to take a ticket or attend a paystation at the end of their stay. A set of cameras located at each entry point reads the customer’s number plate and if it recognises it as an approved tag holder, the boomgates rise (otherwise a ticket is issued). On exit, the cameras once again read the number plate and the system debits the cost of the parking to the customer’s tag account. Easy!
Below are a few photos. During the initial month of use, customers who signed up were offered discounted parking (50%) but the owner is not anticipating any special discounts going forward.
