City of Tulsa Creates Convenient Downtown Parking System in Partnership with Flowbird

The City of Tulsa, Oklahoma has begun the final transition to pay-by-plate parking in partnership with Flowbird Group, a global supplier of urban mobility solutions. The changeover is part of the City’s plan to remove all outdated parking meters within the year, replacing them with Flowbird’s Strada multi-space pay stations.

The first round of pay stations were installed in the Tulsa Arts District in July of 2018, with the main goal to progress towards a more modern, functional mobility system. Compared to the outdated meters, the Strada Pay Stations provide ease-of-use for both the customers and the City’s parking division.

With the new pay-by-plate system, Tulsans and visitors can pay for on-street parking anywhere downtown with coins, credit  or debit cards, or with the simple touch of a smartphone via the mobile payment app. Each Strada Pay Station is equipped with a 7” full color display screen, runs on solar power, and withstands rain, snow, fog and inclement weather. The pay stations are connected to Flowbird’s back-office system, Smartfolio, a cloud-based data intelligence platform that provides secure and actionable information to City staff, such as parking performance metrics, data visualization, and automated reporting.

The decision to update all remaining parking stations came from Mayor G.T. Bynum’s 2018 executive order to help the City’s parking system.

“As Downtown Tulsa continues to grow, it is important to have an on-street parking system that works. We are replacing antiquated 30-year old parking meters with new technology, and will have one consistent on-street parking system throughout downtown that will be compatible with our new mobile parking app,” Mayor Bynum said.

 The City began looking to improve parking in 2015 with the goal to create a convenient and effective downtown parking system. The City tested parking kiosks from 3 different vendors before deciding on Flowbird’s Strada for its ease-of-use, back-end system, value and compatibility with mobile payment apps. The City entered into partnership with Flowbird, and installed 21 Strada Pay Stations, a successful implementation that would lead to an expansion of nearly 200 pay stations.

Installation of 175 Flowbird Strada Pay Stations began on January 16th, and is expected to be complete by early February. Flowbird’s local distribution and service partner, Wetherbee Electric is managing the installation of all of the new devices.

Currently, Flowbird supports over 40,000 parking pay stations for 600 customers throughout the U.S.

About Flowbird 

FLOWBIRD operates in over 5,000 towns and cities in 70 countries. The company is constantly innovating and breaking new ground to help provide solutions. The merger of Parkeon and Cale, announced in January, will enable us to combine our expertise and accelerate our investments into products and services that, through digitalization, technology and innovation, will help us to improve individual journey experiences and make our communities better.