Parking: Ceredigion ticket machines 'driving tourists away'

"Very complicated" parking machines need replacing to stop deterring tourists, a councillor has said.

Ceredigion councillor Elizabeth Evans said the machines "must be changed" to stop future difficulties for visitors.

Ms Evans said the problems have existed since they were first installed in 2020, and that "nothing" has changed.

Ceredigion council said changes to its machines were "not being actively considered or pursued at this stage".

Motorists have complained about being unable to easily pay for daily, rather than weekly, parking or being unable to easily change the language on the machines.

It comes after long queues formed in a north Wales car park where the ticket machine defaulted to Welsh, causing non-Welsh speakers to struggle to use it.

"People are not using them, as we've seen this morning, because they can't use them, and driving off," Ms Evans said.

"Visitors are driving off out of Aberaeron and that's a massive impact for local businesses. Small businesses are complaining, not just in Aberaeron, but in Lampeter and in Aberteifi as well.

"If you're older and there's a queue behind you, it puts a lot of pressure on you to use it."

Tom and Diane Edwards were on holiday in nearby Aberystwyth and hoped to come to Aberaeron for the day.

However, BBC Wales spoke to them on their way out of the town, following a fruitless experience using one of the parking machines.

"So many people have told us how nice Aberaeron is so we thought we'd come down for a couple of hours," they said.

"But you can't use the machine, we've tried to [pay] daily but it's only [showing to pay] weekly. We've just tried for seven to eight minutes and we're going now because we just can't use it."

Verena Edgeworth from Bristol, who is in Ceredigion on holiday, needed help in order to pay for her parking.

"I couldn't even work out how to select the language properly and then it kept coming up as weekly and I wanted just two hours," she said.

She added that the whole experience made her feel, "awkward and annoyed because if I hadn't been able to pay I would have just driven back to where I'm staying".

Businesses also feel that the machines prevent people from stopping in the towns.

"Locals and shopkeepers are talking about how it's more and more difficult to nip into town and do their regular shopping," shop owner Lucy Watson said.

Cerdin Price, who owns a business in Lampeter, said the machines had a detrimental effect there as well.

"People come to town, they can't use these machines, because they are not easy at all," he said.

The council said it understood the machines were used by five other Welsh local authorities and the information provided at the machines to support the public had also been updated and improved to reflect people's feedback and experience.

In a statement, it added: "Following a system upgrade during the summer 2022, the processing and speed of transactions has improved."

Cabinet member for highways Keith Henson said: "We constantly take on feedback and it's all about continuous improvement.

"In terms of the machines used by the local authority, we understand there are five other local authorities in Wales and they are a constantly evolving machine in terms of the software available."

He said officers were looking at resolving the default weekly option to a daily payment option.

Mr Henson said having the Welsh language as the default was unlikely to change but he would find ways to make it easier to change to the desired language setting.

However, changing the payment method to accept coins was unlikely.

"The machines were invested in, at a cost of around £150,000 so I can't see that being changed in all honesty because of the potential cost to change them back.

"On an already stretched local authority budget would that be the best investment?" said Mr Henson.