The city of Béziers will be equipped from January 3, 2022 with a new anti-parking fraud weapon. An LAPI car (in other words Automated Reading of License Plates) will crisscross the heart of the city. Its mission is to identify more quickly the drivers who have not paid the paid parking fees.
“It is by no means a money machine.‘specifies Michel Ramandou, responsible for Major Projects at the City and Agglo de Béziers Méditerranée. “Our goal is to improve parking control and make field agents work in better conditions.. ”
In 2020, 12 complaints were filed against irascible drivers for incivility (verbal insults, physical altercations).
“The goal is not to increase the number of fines, but to promote vehicle rotation and thus fight against sucking and annoying cars.”
Béziers is not the first town to equip itself with such a vehicle in the Hérault department. This has been the case with Montpellier since the spring. Marseille was a pioneer in this field in France. This car equipped with on-board cameras on the roof take pictures of all vehicles in the streets where there is a charge for parking. Drivers who have not registered their plate in the parking meters are then fined remotely by an agent. The agents will always be on the ground adds the town hall.
The city of Béziers has 5,300 parking spaces including 2,400 in paid zones. Drivers have 30 minutes of free parking each day in both the yellow and green zones.
In Béziers, 2,300 free spaces, 260 in the blue zone and 1,600 underground parking spaces
The objective is also to fight against motorists equipped with false disability cards. Here as elsewhere, they would be far too numerous. People with reduced mobility benefit from free parking. Nothing changes for them, adds Michel Ramandou. To date, more than 250 people with reduced mobility have already registered on the municipal file.
Since 2018, parking fines at the fixed price of 17 euros have been replaced by FPS: post-parking packages. The price of these packages is now set by the cities themselves.
In 2019, 31,400 fines (FPS) were drawn up in Béziers.