To help residents protect their wallets from costly fines while also streamlining the city’s parking enforcement operations, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in July the full deployment of ParkNYC, a new mobile app and parking meter system that allows residents to pay for parking remotely.
With this announcement, Queens became the last borough of the city to receive the meters that now monitor more than 85,000 parking spaces across the city, but the project is receiving highly mixed reviews in online app stores. Mayor de Blasio and Polly Trottenberg, New York’s Department of Transportation Commissioner, touted the app’s convenience, but some online reviewers are complaining that the app often doesn’t work, and doesn’t allow users to extend their time via the app. Complaints of the app’s missing or failed functionality can be found on the Google and Apple app stores. Of 197 reviews of the app found on the Google Play Store in July, 127 were one-star reviews.
Vendor ParkMobile and the New York Department of Transportation are managing the new platform that allows users, the city says, to pay for parking remotely and receive alerts when their time is almost up. The system, which began limited operation in December, links registered license plate numbers to the handheld devices of traffic enforcement agents who can confirm payments. The city has also added new signs and decals to connect each block-side with a six-digit zone code, something drivers can use to identify their spaces in the app. The city also anticipates the app will assist with transportation planning by collecting data on parking behavior and providing a reporting platform that can reduce workloads to process and collect fines.
Source: State Scoop
