How to follow up a story

I came across this forum posting recently, entitled "Never on a Sunday: Paycard confusion!"

The writer comments that: "Some people who've been trying to park in St Helier on a Sunday have been left scratching their heads rather than their cards. A new residents' parking scheme in the Cheapside area of town is causing confusion. Unless you've got a permit you have to show a scratch card from 9 in the morning till ten at night. And that's everyday of the week including Sundays. There's a problem though. There's no Sundays on the scratch cards. Parking control say they don't patrol on a Sunday. The scheme's being run by the parish. They haven't commented."

http://www.vuedesisles.com/law-enforcement-f20/never-on-a-sunday-paycard-confusion-t725.htm#5956

Indeed, when I checked the TTS site, it notes that

To use a Paycard you have to scratch the silver coating off in each of the five sections to indicate the day, date, month and arrival time in hours and minutes.

 

http://www.gov.je/TransportTechnicalServices/Transport/Parking/paycards.htm

But checking up further with the Parish  (who are very helpful about providing information, and gave it promptly), it is revealed that all one needs on a Sunday are four sections (not five) to be scratched off in these residents parking zones (currently  St. Mark's and Cheapside) - i.e. day, time (hours, minutes, month).

 

There is a change in the law, covered by Amendment 22 of the St Helier Road Traffic Law which came into effect on the 1st. May 2008, which deals with all of this for these residential zones. Because it is so recent, you will not find it in the consolidated online laws yet.

 

The reason for the use of paycards on a Sunday is to dissuade non-residents from using the areas reserved for the residents parking zones (and for which residents pay for a permit), which seems perfectly sensible to me. 

 

TTS haven't updated their website (now there's a surprise!), but Wikipedia have:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Jersey#Parking

 

It leads me to wonder if the original writer or the people scratching their heads had in fact bothered to check with the Parish authorities before rushing into print!