Motorists could pay for all on-street parking with their Octopus and other smart cards by 2003, the Transport Department announced yesterday.
It is working on plans to upgrade all 16,500 parking meters to accept smart cards after a series of trials with three brands of instant-payment cards - Mondex, Visacash and Octopus - over the past two years.
Assistant Commissioner for Transport Peter Luk Yuk-kwan told the South China Morning Post that the hope was to develop a parking meter that would accept all the cards in the trial and others, such as Visa.
"We understand there is a need to ensure the new parking meter is as convenient as possible for motorists,"
"However, as we are talking about developing an on-street parking meter that will accept a wide range of smart cards, it is very likely the switch will be a very expensive affair."
The switch would be the second in three years - electronic parking meters that accept non-rechargeable e-Park cards replaced coin-operated ones in September 1999.
