Reader's Blog: Kent station parking can drive you around bend
Having recently travelled to Dublin by train, my first such journey in years, I couldn’t help but notice the article by Joe Leogue concerning the recent sharp rise in car clamping at Cork’s Kent Station.
On the Saturday after Christmas, my wife and I reached the station more than half an hour before the 7am train.
The carpark’s two pay-stations were unlit and one was out of order.
Using a mobile-phone as a torch, we discovered that payment could be made either by downloading an app, or via a coin-only payment of €9.50.
Not having enough coinage, I hurried to the shop in the train station, bought an Irish Examiner and received enough coin from the obliging shop assistant to pay the parking charge.
Then the machine twice rejected the coins.
With time moving on, being still without train tickets and with no sign of life at the carpark office, I briefly contemplated leaving a note on the car dashboard to explain.
However, having previously witnessed an episode involving a garda and a well-built Apcoa car-clamper (the garda had to stump up €120.), I thought better of it.
Fortunately, on the next attempt, the machine accepted the coins, we got our parking ticket, then our train tickets, and caught the intended train.
On a busier day things might have been different.
While Apcoa or similar companies may be within their legal rights to clamp the cars of those who fail to park in line with the stated rules, a corresponding responsibility to ensure that the simple purchase of a parking ticket is far less arduous than a 19th Century trip on the West Clare Railway would be no bad thing.
