Pittsburgh Partners with Flowbird to Test Fully Digital Parking Kiosks

The Pittsburgh Parking Authority has partnered with Flowbird Group to launch 30 upgraded parking terminals that will now be both cashless and paperless. The upgrade transforms Pittsburgh’s original Flowbird CWT parking terminals to open architecture kiosks, leveraging credit card payment and digital text receipts.

The City of Pittsburgh is no stranger to innovation, known in the parking industry as the first city in the country to transition to Pay-by-Plate as early as 2012. Now, in its 7th contractual year with Flowbird, the Pittsburgh Parking Authority (PPA) recently extended its contract this year with plans to upgrade all 1100 original Flowbird CWT terminals to this new open technology.

"We want to keep on the edge of technology and advancement for our city,” said David Onorato, Executive Director of the Pittsburgh Parking Authority.

The City’s original CWT terminals have a monochrome screen, functioning in pay-by-plate mode and accepting payment in credit or debit card, coins, or mobile payment.

The PPA will be testing out 30 upgraded Flowbird CWT terminals for 6 months to collect feedback from customers. Transactions, usage trends and performance will be reviewed, analyzed and compared to the previous 6 months.

Benefits of going both cashless and paperless span from environmental to operational. By switching to text-only receipts, the city could save nearly 3 million feet of paper per year. Additionally, the Authority would benefit from increased operational efficiencies while at the same time advancing the parking experience for the City’s residents and visitors.

Among the 30 upgraded terminals, five have been changed from monochrome to color touch screen, all of them remaining paperless and cashless. Usage of these 5 kiosks will also be reviewed and compared after 6 months to test consumer transactions and feedback.

“We will be monitoring all of these for the next 6 months to make sure we achieve an adequate database,” said Onorato, “By the end of the year, we will be able to make an educated decision on how we upgrade the remaining CWT terminals with Flowbird.”

The upgraded Flowbird CWT terminals can be found throughout Pittsburgh’s downtown core with 2 of the color touch screens located in North Shore.

“We are extremely proud to continue this longstanding partnership with David Onorato and the forward-thinking PPA team,” said Benoit Reliquet, President of Flowbird North America, “We look forward to helping them manage their impressive growth by implementing key smart city solutions.”


Currently, Flowbird supports over 40,000 parking pay stations for 650 customers throughout the U.S. This project allows the company to continue its rapid expansion across the State of Pennsylvania. In addition to Pittsburgh, Flowbird systems can be found in top destinations across the State such as Philadelphia, Lancaster, New Hope, and Williamsport.

About Flowbird

Parkeon and Cale have merged to create Flowbird, the world’s leading parking services, and urban mobility company.

The name Flowbird expresses the innate ability of birds to navigate individually within crowded spaces; mirroring the benefits for people of the intelligent parking and multi-modal systems developed for towns and cities by Parkeon and Cale.

Flowbird’s group resources include 500 R&D engineers working on behalf of customers to push the boundaries of innovation in transportation hardware, software, sensor systems, machine-learning and AI, information security and mobile development.