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SALT LAKE CITY — City officials announced another effort Thursday to combat Salt Lake City's infamous parking reputation.
No more running to feed expiring meters, and parkers can even avoid rain or snow by paying from inside their cars — if they have a smartphone.
Residents and visitors can now download a new mobile parking app, ParkSLC, which city officials hope will improve Salt Lake's on-street parking. The city funded the new app within the same project that included the blue meter upgrades announced in March.
"ParkSLC represents a major step in our efforts to improve the parking experience for our customers,” Robin Hutcheson, city transportation division director, said in a news release. “The community asked us for more options for how to pay for parking, and that’s what we’re giving them.”
The new app, developed by Passport Parking, replaces the QuickPay app and provides a more user-friendly, convenient way for users to pay for parking, Hutcheson said. Among other features, the app provides countdowns and reminders for expiring sessions, the ability to extend sessions without having to hurry back to the meter (up to the maximum time allowed), and a log of parking payments.
Hutcheson said since the kiosk upgrades, the city has experienced no system failures and residents' complaints have "dropped drastically to an all-time low." However, only 7 percent of downtown visitors used the QuickPay app, so ParkSLC was developed to increase the number of mobile users and continue working toward a more user-friendly system.
Along with ParkSLC, the city also unveiled a new merchant validation system available to any local businesses seeking to offer discounted parking to customers who use the new app.
Business owners can sign up for a ParkSLC account and fund the account to subsidize their customers' parking payments and generate codes at parkslc.com.
Greg Fritz of Martine Cafe said the new app will help with parking challenges that sometimes deter customers, as well as create a more "seamless" process to obtain parking validation.
"We offer complimentary valet to try to curtail some of those issues, and this is going to be another opportunity to make it easier for our patrons to come see us and have some great food," Fritz said.
Brandon Rivard with Passport Parking said the company also provides parking technology for cities such as Chicago, Boston and Toronto.
“Passport Parking allowed us to configure our platform to meet our city’s unique challenges and goals,” Hutcheson said. “We’ve created a solution that offers a great product for our residents and visitors to Salt Lake City, as well as better options for our local merchants. We appreciate Passport’s attention to our unique Salt Lake City needs.”
Contributing: Keith McCord Email: kmckellar@deseretnews.com
