The South Bayview Bulldog

It is a slow start but the pay-by-phone concept now being introduced in Toronto brings a very much needed return to genuine service in the City’s collection of money for parking. For many years, the mechanics and frankly the morality of public parking in Toronto has gone straight down hill. The introduction of paper receipts and the loss of the local portability of time made it more time-consuming,  more expensive and combined with aggressive ticketing, more perilous to park on Toronto streets. The expectation that citizens engaged in their important business would reasonably be able to keep track of time and somehow get back to the meter to avoid a ticket was laughable. Simple user-pay was transformed into gotcha buddy. Stephen LeDrew on CP24 gave voice to this truth when he observed today that there were going to be a lot of frustrated enforcement officers. Well, these public employees may or may not be frustrated but it is clear that with pay-by-phone, when it is fully implemented, ordinary taxpayers will get what they bargain for, pay for the time they use and be free from the impact on their wallets of gotcha ticketing. Much comment today makes the point that pay-by-phone is easier than the present system. Yes, but the present system is an abomination. The new one is not a single thing less than the City owes its taxpayers. Pay-by-phone enters trial program at Green P

The Toronto Parking Authority has introduced its Green P parking app. It is a staged arrival and may be used at only a limited number of parking lots for the time being. The program permits payment for parking at City lots with your cell phone. An important feature of pay-by-phone is that the user is alerted to the approaching end of his paid time and may top-up time from his phone with  no  penalty. A similar and in many ways more important app is under development by the parking authority to permit pay-by-phone on metered streets. As explained to The South Bayview Bulldog in January, the president of the parking authority Lorne Persiko, street parking is a more complicated process because it requires the involvement of the police.  Parking enforcement officers will be trained to check the “time status” of vehicles before issuing a ticket. As reported here in January, pay-by-phone parking is popping up all over North America and has proven to be a major public service. It permits drivers to open a so-called “wallet” not too different from the accounts offered by retail businesses such as Starbucks. The convenience represented in paying for parking by phone however would seem to surpass anything now in use. With an account containing $20, for example, a motorist can park and by entering the car’s license plate and certain other information, pre-pay for as much parking as is needed. Critically, the system permits drivers who are delayed getting back to their vehicle to top-up the parking without penalty from wherever they are. It should be a boon to anyone delayed at the dentist or for old friends lingering over coffee. It will be hard to incur a ticket because the phone alerts drivers to  the approaching end of their paid time. In addition, it will eliminate completely the abusive confiscation of money. At present, anyone wishing to top up time must go to the meter, buy a new ticket, forfeiting the amount left on the old one.