[Mark]

It's a turn up and find out mentality.

Im working on a masterplan for a shopping centre in Dublin at the moment and the future of all car parks in Ireland will be ticket controlled car parks. The current incentives are for people to stay less than one hour or 2 as most pricing systems operate with first hour or two free etc.

However you will soon see the short term visitors being penalised with the idea that shoppers should shop less often for longer thus creating less daily traffic.

I very much doubt you will see the US style 'store validation' come in here but parking management is a very big business nowadays.

Alas with Rail stations its not as straightforward. The theory should be that people living within walking distance shouldnt be parking. A fee of some sort would definitely be an incentive for them to leave their car at home.

Should short term stay passengers be penalised over all day commuters etc? Ideally the holder of a monthly or annual pass should be treated as a valuable customer and any parking 'add-on' to their ticket should work out cheaper than for someone like say on a one day tripper or weekly ticket holder.

it could work both ways in this sense - it would encourage buying monthly or annual tickets and thus more train usage and also it would discourage once off day trippers from parking..

Pay parking in train stations involves a carefull balance to discourage car use while not having such a high price that would discourage getting the train altogether.