Pay-by-phone parking arrives soon

NEWS/ CITY — With a little more testing and some luck, we’ll be able to pay for downtown parking with our smartphones by the middle of next month.

David Duckworth, the City’s corporate services director, gave the Armchair Mayor News a quick run-through Tuesday of an app that seems to be getting the bugs worked out of it. Staff have been working on it with Telus and the parking vendor and are hopeful of a launch by about Aug. 15.

On that day, a blue sticker will be peeled off the parking kiosks, revealing a “Pay by phone” option. The City estimates that as many as 20 per cent of those who park downtown will make use of the alternative to paying at the kiosks.

“It’s just an added convenience,” said Duckworth.

One that will cost you 35 cents per transaction.

It will work something like this. Say, on a cold winter’s day you just don’t want to stand around outside stuffing coins or your credit car in a kiosk. You shiver into a coffee shop, pull out your cell and pay for your parking while warming up with a latte.

First, you have to register, a quick and easy process that you carry out on your smartphone after punching in a program code. Then you call in, enter your licence plate and hit OK and that’s just about it. One catch is the clock starts ticking so that you automatically pay for the maximum three hours unless you call back and shorten the time, sort of like negative billing.

Duckworth says he personally likes that feature, as it makes the process simpler, and you quite often don’t know how much parking you’ll need. This way, when you’re ready to leave, you connect back in and stop the clock on your parking.

Then there’s the 35-cent transaction fee, which will be added to your parking bill each time you tell your phone you want to pay for parking. The fee is there because of the costs associated with sending the billing through Telus, said Duckworth.

There are actually two ways to pay by phone. One is by calling a number on the phone; the other is by texting. Or, pay at a kiosk.

Duckworth is expecting some confusion at the beginning but thinks people will come to appreciate the feature, which was supposed to be available when the new kiosks were commissioned more than six months ago but weren’t available from the service provider at the time.

Twenty-five per cent of parking transactions are currently done by credit card at the kiosks, less than expected.

Next week, another possible change will be unveiled — a new colour kiosk screen will be set up in the Seymour Street parking control office for people to look at. The screen is bigger and easier to read than the ones currently in the kiosks, Duckworth said.

A decision on whether to switch from the current screens to the new kind will depend on reaction and cost.