In Vladivostok, parking meters stopped working due to European sanctions

Parking meters have temporarily stopped working in Vladivostok due to sanctions from the European Union, the Digital Primorye company reported, citing the manufacturer of parking equipment Flowbird.

“European Union sanctions against RUSSIA have been intensifying over the past few months. From now on, these sanctions do not allow us to continue our business relationship with your company,” says Flowbird in a letter sent to Digital Primorye.

Parking meters were deactivated on October 1. In this regard, devices for cashless payment for parking in the city will be temporarily disabled, the company clarified, noting that an analysis and assessment of the timing of modernization of parking equipment is already being carried out.

Digital Primorye is an operator of paid parking space in Vladivostok.

On December 2, project manager Stanislav Zhuravlev, assessing the first week of operation of parking meters, admitted that during the implementation of the project it was necessary to resolve issues of import substitution of equipment. He noted that there were problems with almost all hardware systems. As a result, the company kept only Swedish parking meters; spare parts for them were supplied through Kazakhstan as part of “parallel imports”.

On July 17, Kommersant wrote that they were going to remove all parking meters in Moscow—that’s 590 of them. The authorities left only 80 of the most popular devices at medical institutions, shopping centers and train stations. The popularity of parking meters has fallen over time: the press service of the Parking Space Administrator stated that “95% of drivers choose the Russian Parking application for payment rather than parking meters.

The European Union agreed and adopted 11 packages of sanctions against Russia after the start of the military operation in Ukraine . As a result, EU countries stopped selling equipment and electronics in Russia, including those used to create and repair parking meters. Russia considers the sanctions illegal. The Ministry of Finance admitted that Brussels had exhausted the possibilities for painful restrictions against Moscow.