A NUMBER of Western Australian councils have adopted new technology that notifies parking rangers if vehicles overstay the allotted time in car parks. The Town of Victoria Park is the latest council to trial the Parking Overstay Detection System or PODS, installing 50 of the units in marked car-parking bays in both Harvey Street and along a strip of Albany Highway in Victoria Park two weeks ago. The Town of Cottesloe trialled a similar technology along Napolean Street in April, called Meter-Eye, which is being distributed by Wilson Parking. Owned by eastern states company, Vehicle Monitoring Systems, the PODS technology features a small data-gathering device, which is installed in the ground in the middle of each car-parking bay. Each device is then programmed with the bay’s time restriction and relays the data back to an electronic data base, which determines the length of time a car is parked in a bay. The Town of Victoria Park intends to trial the devices from August 6-20, before making a recommendation to its council. Mayor Mick Lee said the implementation of the PODS technology may enable better monitoring of high demand parking areas, reduce the amount of overstays, allow shoppers improved access to car-parking and more efficient use of town ranger resources. Jenelle Carter