Councillors and researchers question the effectiveness of clamping cars, as fines gain in popularity

With Dublin City Council’s contract with parking-enforcement company Dublin Street Parking Services (DSPS) due to end this summer, a councillor has again raised the prospect of doing away with clamping.

This time, it’s Fine Gael Councillor James Geoghegan, who has proposed it in a motion, though he is by no means the first to float the idea. Councillors from several parties have criticised the effectiveness of clamping as a parking enforcement method.

Researchers based in Canada and England who study parking say wheel-clamping is not a great method of enforcement. In Ireland, the National Transport Authority (NTA) says it’s rarely used by councils.

“My understanding is Dublin City Council is [the] only one currently using clamping as a method of parking enforcement,” an NTA spokesperson said by email on Friday.

Geoghegan, the Fine Gael councillor, said by phone on 18 January that “We’ve come to the end of the road with clamping in terms of its effectiveness.”

Why does Dublin City Council continue to use clamping as a parking-enforcement method, what goals can it achieve better than other parking-enforcement methods?

A council spokesperson on Tuesday pointed to towing the car to a nearby location (and leaving it there, clamped), as particularly effective in “enabling public transport, pedestrians cyclists and motorists to safely and efficiently use the city streets”.

But they did not defend the common practice of clamping a car and leaving it in place until the driver comes back, contacts DSPS, pays the fine and gets the clamp taken off.

Winds of change?

At the moment, the council has a contract with DSPS, but that’s set to end this summer.

The council could extend the contract by a year or two, a council spokesperson has said. And it plans to do that, council transport head Brendan O’Brien said last September.

On Tuesday, a council spokesperson said, “The extension of the current contract and tender renewal process is under consideration at present. Dublin City Council are not in a position to advise of a date that a request for tender will be published.”

But that contract will eventually end, and the council will eventually issue a tender for a new contract.

As that time nears, councillors and others with an interest in parking-enforcement in the city have been envisioning how a new contract should be different.

In August last year, the Green Party’s candidate for Cabra-Glasnevin, Feljin Jose, suggested that the next contract should shift the balance of parking-enforcement efforts a bit more away from “revenue protection” and towards keeping footpaths and cycleways and bus lanes clear.

Clamping people who don’t pay the council to park when they should “protects” council parking-fee revenue, prompting people to make sure they pay.

In the 2018 tender document for the contract DSPS now holds, the council said the winning contractor would have to ensure the number of vehicles clamped for “pay and display offences does not exceed 55% of the total number”.

In 2023, “42% of enforcements in 2023 relate to Pay and Display bays”, a council spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Also last summer, Green Party councillors Janet Horner, Carolyn Moore, Michael Pidgeon and Caroline Conroy proposed a motion that – among other things – the council should take over parking enforcement instead of contracting it out again.

Council transport head Brendan O’Brien said no way, basically, but suggested that council managers get together with councillors to talk about how the next contract for a company to provide a parking service could be different, better.

That workshop hasn’t happened yet, Horner said Tuesday.

Now Geoghegan, the Fine Gael councillor, with an eye on the ending of the DSPS contract, and thinking about how the council’s next parking-enforcement contract could be different, has put in a motion at the council’s South East Area Committee.

DSPS’s services should be independently reviewed “prior to the expiry of their current contract in July or any renewal is offered”, it says.

“No extension of the contract, or publication of a new tender for a contract for clamping, should take place prior to an independent examination assessing the impact clamping has had on illegal parking in Dublin City over the past 5 years,” it says.

“And the full city council should be consulted on whether clamping should continue to be used as a means of parking enforcement over and above other alternatives used by neighbouring Dublin local authorities,” it says.

Does clamping work?

Has Dublin City Council done research on the effectiveness of clamping for revenue protection, and/or to keep people from parking on footpaths, in cycle lanes, or in bus lanes? In response to a query, it did not point out or provide any.

In a 2015 paper for the British Parking Association, “Researching the Research”, Adam Snow wrote: “There is very little academic research on the enforcement of parking.”

Now a law lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK, with an interest in road traffic regulation, he says that is still true. But in his view, clamping “doesn’t really make a lot of sense to clamp you because then you’re holding up that space”.

Mehdi Nourinejad, an assistant professor at the Civil Engineering Department of York University in Toronto who researches parking management, also said he thinks clamping doesn’t make a lot of sense as a parking-enforcement mechanism.

“It’s contradictory in what the enforcement is actually trying to do, which is to free up space in places where there shouldn’t be cars,” Nourinejad says.

Dublin City Council’s transport department is aware of the drawbacks of clamping as a parking-enforcement method, as it made clear in a 2021 report to the transport committee.

“In the case of a vehicle illegally parked in a bus lane or cycle track, clamping the offending vehicle ensures that the disruption to the bus or bike lane continues,” it says.

There’s the option for DSPS to tow the illegally parked vehicle to clear up the disruption, leave it around the corner, and clamp it there. That’s a bit better, the council report says.

“But while waiting for the tow truck to arrive the offending vehicle may be removed by the owner without any penalty,” it says.

Another drawback to clamping is that it takes time, the report says. When several vehicles are illegally parked, “say outside a commercial area”, the clamper might get the first one but the other drivers could well see them working, and get away, it says.

Also, people can and do cut clamps off their wheels, especially around construction sites, where tools to do that might be readily available, the report says.

To solve these problems, council managers at that time proposed allowing DSPS to start issuing “fixed penalty notices” – fines for cars parking in cycle lanes, bus lanes, loading zones and on footpaths.

It started a 12-month “pilot” programme, which a February 2022 report said was proving effective and should be expanded. What happened after the end of the pilot?

Horner, the Green Party councillor, said “I think that it’s kind of a pilot that has just petered on.”

“Certainly, I’m glad we’ve moved away from clamping as our only enforcement mechanism, which is where we were a few years ago,” she said. “So introducing the fines I think has definitely been progress.”

Criticisms of clamping

There are other drawbacks, too, to using clamping as a parking enforcement method, critics of it say.

Jason Cullen, spokesperson for the Dublin Commuter Coalition, recalled returning to his car late on a Saturday night with his partner to find it clamped.

“It was 10, 11 o’clock at night maybe by the time we get back to the car, car park’s deserted, it’s in the middle of nowhere,” he said.

“In those particular situations, it’s far more dangerous to the individual, who, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is now left in a very vulnerable position,” he said.

Not only that, but the “release fee” of  €125 has to be paid on the spot to get the car released – it can’t be paid a few days later after pay-day or anything like that.

Depending on a person’s situation, having to pay that out might put someone in a tough spot financially, Cullen said.

A lot of clamping is done in places where people have overstayed in a paid parking spot, said Geoghegan, the Fine Gael councillor.

In that situation, clamping someone’s car keeps the parking spot blocked up, and “in many cases” is a “disproportionate” punishment for someone who has overstayed for a relatively short period, he says.

Instead, Geoghegan proposes towing vehicles that are parked in a place – like a cycle lane or bus lane or footpath – where they create a danger. And using fines to push people to pay to park in legal spots.

In the division of powers between elected councillors and appointed council managers and staff, matters related to contracts like the one for parking enforcement fall within the council managers’ bailiwick, Geoghegan said.

“But I’d like councillors to take a stand here,” he said. It’s unclear exactly when his motion will come up at the South East Area Committee, to see if they will try to.

Alternatives

In England and in Canada, fines are very widely used for parking enforcement, Snow and Nourinejad say.

The state of the art at the moment is using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to identify and issue fines to people who park illegally, Nourinejad says.

This can work easily for car parks, where the cars come in and out of defined entrances where stationary cameras can be placed, he says.

But it can also work on city streets, with a parking enforcer driving around in a car with an ANPR-equipped camera.

This mobile camera can be set up to automatically fine people who’ve overstayed in on-street paid parking spots, Nourninejad says. And it can also handle cars parked illegally outside of paid parking spots, he says.

“Today I mean, technology has advanced so much that the way it typically works, this technology, is they geofence these parking zones,” he says.

“So the vehicle knows that when I’m within this geographical area, I’m just going to be looking for vehicles that haven’t paid. But if I’m in this other geographical area, I’m looking for any kind of violation,” he says.

Neither local authorities nor the Gardaí are using this kind of technology in Ireland, a spokesperson for the Department of Transport said on Tuesday.

“The legislative basis for such cameras, however, should the Gardaí decide to deploy them, is already in place,” they said.

Would the council consider using cameras and ANPR to automatically issue parking fines if it could?

“Adoption of new technologies is key to increasing efficiency and improving quality of service to the public and will be explored in future enforcement contracts,” a council spokesperson said Tuesday.

Cullen, of the Dublin Commuter Coalition, says he doesn’t think using camera-based parking enforcement would really increase the amount people are being recorded in the city. There are cameras all over the place already, he says.

“You walk outside your door and you’re on camera, effectively, unless you’re in a suburban area,” Cullen says. “In the city centre? You’re on camera 100 percent of the time, okay? So you know, what’s the harm in putting up a few more cameras?”

To make a system of fines work, however they are issued, the council would have to pay for enough enforcement so that people believe that if they park illegally they’re going to get caught – and the fine has to be large enough to be a deterrent, Nourinejad says.

“If you have a really low probability of getting a ticket, or if the fine is low, you’re more likely to park,” he says.