This is how the new ORA of Valencia works: parking meters with a pollution meter, hours from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and payment by card
This Monday, June 21, the new contract of the Parking Regulatory Ordinance (ORA) that replaces the current one, in force for more than 15 years, comes into force.
The new ORA, managed by the company EYSA, will start operating with 5,431 regulated parking spaces and 195 parking meters. The Councilor for Sustainable Mobility, Giuseppe Grezzi, has highlighted that “the main novelty is that you can also unpark. In other words, if someone pays for two hours but only spends one, they can choose to go to the parking meter and accumulate the fraction of money they have not used in a wallet to use it the next time”.
Grezzi explained that “for the first time, the parking meters will be municipal property. In the previous contract, the city was paying for those parking meters but, later, they were owned by the company. Right now, we pay and amortize them but we will be owners and thus incorporate resources to the City Council”.
The 195 new parking meters installed in the city have LED lighting and screens in different languages, allow payment by card, are connected to the mobile network and have solar panels. The councilor affirms that they are “parking meters with very advanced technology, touch screen, very easy and very intuitive.” To be able to park, it will also be mandatory to insert the car’s license plate.
In addition, soon, 35% of the new parking meters in the city will have pollution sensors. Grezzi has commented that “we will make the most suitable location to have even more information on the quality of the air in the city and more capillarity on the levels of contamination by zones”.
The entry into force of the new contract will entail the freezing of rates and the adaptation of schedules to the new mobility ordinance, which came into force in 2019. Thus, the general schedule will be from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. (until now it was 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.) in all regulated areas, except those located in the districts of l’Olivereta, Patraix (except Tres Forques), Benimaclet, Rascanya and the neighborhoods of l’Amistat, Albors and Camí Fondo, which will not have regulated parking on Saturday afternoon.
The surveillance of the parking areas will be carried out with personnel on the street, but four electric vehicles with cameras will also be incorporated that will provide the service with the most advanced technology.
The Department is also studying the requests from various neighborhoods in the city to establish orange parking areas for residents. Among the neighborhoods that have approached the Department to request orange zones, Giuseppe Grezzi has cited the surroundings of the bullring and the areas of Russafa, Ciutat Vella, Benimaclet and Cabanyal, among others.