The Woolshops shopping centre in Halifax, West Yorkshire, has updated its car parking equipment. Three new entrance and four exit barriers, seven automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and three Pay on Foot pay stations, have been fitted by the pay on foot parking systems manufacturer, DESIGNA.
DESIGNA‘s ABACUS system includes the new Multicon MC Barcode for processing of barcode tickets and cards. The Multicon MC Barcode enables access to two ticket magazines which store up to 10,000 tickets. Barcode tickets can be read in all four directions.
With more than 40 stores and cafes, Woolshops has direct access car parking for more than 300 vehicles. Jason Gregg, Shopping Centre Manager at Woolshops said: “We’ve been looking to upgrade our system for a while and we have known Tony at DESIGNA for a number of years. It has been a competitive tender process, we wanted ANPR and didn’t want to go ticketless and found that DESIGNA met all our requirements. One of our team also visited the DESIGNA stand at Parkex and was very impressed with the demonstration and how it worked. The system is working very well and we received great support from the team before and after its installation. During the project DESIGNA was also able to run the new system alongside our old one so the transition was easy and meant no loss of revenue, which was very important to us. We are very happy with the end result and would definitely recommend DESIGNA to others.”
The 300-space car park, of two decks, with ANPR allows shopping centre managers to track the amount of time each car has spent on site. The car park’s entrance and exit have two DESIGNA In+ and Out+ ticket terminals.
Both the entrance and exit lanes have barriers for security and open on exit via the ANPR so customers can leave the car park without having to insert their tickets. The four-way barcode readers also ensure visitors can insert their ticket any way round into any of the pay stations around the site.
For payment, three of DESIGNA’s new Pay on Foot machines are placed over two levels of the car park. This allows customers to pay for their visit before returning to their car. The pay station is deliberately designed to allow disabled customers to pay freely without assistance. Each of the pay stations is installed with an interactive monitor that offers several languages.
Shopping centre management has full control of the ABACUS system through the server, with a manual pay station (MPS) to allow them to create or override payments. The control room also links with the ticket and payment terminals via a DESIGNA VoIP Intercom to assist customers if required.
DESIGNA’s products are used in Dundrum shopping centre in Dublin, the Mid Valley Megamall in Malaysia, the Mall of Emirates in Dubai and the Belfry shopping centre in Redhill. DESIGNA has more than 15,000 systems installed globally in shopping centres, airports and hospitals. Visit www.designauk.com.
