RingGo

RingGo is a mobile phone parking service currently offered in public car parks and on-street locations in the United Kingdom. The first major implementation (from June 2006) was for the First Great Western Railway. 60 stations were involved such as Taplow railway station (current exceptions are Gloucester, Reading, and Weston-Super-Mare).

This implementation project by the First Group, was an early step in the growing trend away from the established paradigm of paying for parking using electro-mechanical machines which dispense paper tickets – the pay and display model.

RingGo has since been deployed more widely. This includes these local authorities: Bournemouth since July 2006, Hounslow since December 2006, Christchurch since Feb 2007, High Wycombe since May 07, Ealing in limited areas since May 07, Portsmouth since July 2007, and Taunton and Southwark since December 2007. Hartlepool, Stockton-on-Tees, Redcar & Cleveland and Middlesbrough have announced forthcoming implementations. Additionally, all RoadChef and Moto Hospitality motorway service stations offer RingGo as a means to pay for extended periods of parking.

Parking is a niche in which electronic money as opposed to cash-money is now making some significant advances. Phone parking has received some bad press notably in respect to the City of Westminster implementation which is not RingGo.

The generic advantages to members of the public of phone parking services are:
*Avoidance of the need to have coinage
*The ability to pay the correct amount only
*Security – payment can be made from within a locked car
*Can extend without having to go back to the car

The specific disadvantages to rail users at Oxford station is that there is no alternative method of payment (apart from paying the full non-rail-user price from the machine in the car park), the daily code number cannot be seen while queuing for a ticket (since this is only displayed on the platform to ensure a rail user discount) and there is an unavoidable phone charge for pay-as-you-go phone users. For contract phones the local telephone number means that it will be included in its free minutes package.

The generic advantages to car park operators are:
*The reduction in theft from and vandalism to coin based machinery
*Lower capital costs
*Reduction in cash handling costs such as banking and shrinkage

RingGo has been implemented for on-street as well as off-street payments in towns such as Bournemouth ,Hounslow and Portsmouth.

The RingGo brand is wholly owned by Cobalt Telephone Technologies Ltd, a UK private company.

External links

* [http://www.ringgo.co.uk/index.html The "RingGo" website] and also [http://www.MyRingGo.com The "MyRingGo" website] for details on how it works and where it is available
* [http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/Content.aspx?id=185 First Great Western]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/5179176.stm BBC News item on RingGo]
* [http://www.bis.org/publ/cpss38.pdf Bank for International Settlements]
* [http://www.ctt.co.uk Cobalt Telephone Technologies]