Nowadays we live in a world where we can't imagine just one day without our mobile phone, tablet or laptop. A world without access to the internet is no world at all. Companies who provide payment options to the parking industry use the newest online technologies to make sure paying for parking is as convenient and easy as possible.
The city of Frederick ( Maryland, US) has started a pilot program of their newly implemented Parkmobile services in order to see is this new payment method is the easiest way to pay for parking. Frederick is the first city in the state of Maryland to implement the pay-by-phone parking option. Searching for coins to feed the meter could soon be a thing of the past.
The city of Fredrick will hold a press conference on November the 27th at 10:00 am, which will be open to the public, to officially introduce the new service. Parkmobile’s offerings include mobile payments for on and off-street parking. You can use the service by downloading the Parkmobile app for free or create an online account on their website. Did you know that Parkmobile recently included PayPall as one of the payment options? Once registered you can use the mobile app, online account or dial a toll-free number to pay for your parking. You can recognize the places where you can use this payment service by the Parkmobile stickers on the parking meters. One thing is certain: you can find the stickers all across parking meters in Frederick!
(By the way, Parkmobile has redesigned their website. It's worth to take a look at it: Very customer-friendly design!)
Also in the City of Olympia the desire for so-called "Smart parking meters" is starting to grow. The City's Mayor Stephen Buxbaum recently proposed to replace all existing parking pay stations with smart parking meters that allow people to pay by credit card.
The parking pay stations are just two years old, but the mayor have always thought they made the wrong decision by purchasing these pay stations because they don't fit the parking situation downtown. He says that customers were disappointedwith the pay stations because they have to walk from their car to the meter and back again to purchase and place the parking ticket on their dashboard. With the new "one-meter-per-parking-place"- smart meters, this problem will be over. Furthermore, the smart meters are digital and easy to use (the city have been quietly trialing a few smart meters for two months). Also the two year old parking pay stations have broken down a few times and have had difficulty reading credit cards. But now, the pay stations are paid off and the city is thinking about replacing them with new smart parking meters.
