Opinion: Parking apps have driven me to distraction a few times. I worried that maybe the problem was me, but a city councillor says she frequently hears similar complaints
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This month brings bad news for Vancouver drivers who like to pay for parking with coins, but good news for anyone wanting to download a sixth parking app onto their phone.
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Vancouver has started phasing out coin collection at municipal parking meters, the city confirmed this week.
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This news arrives just days after the city issued a news release announcing “drivers in Vancouver now have an additional mobile option to pay for street parking,” with drivers now able to use a mobile app called HotSpot.
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HotSpot joins a different app called PayByPhone, which Vancouver parkers have used for several years now.
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But PayByPhone doesn’t work everywhere in the city. For example, if you go to Queen Elizabeth Park, a public park in the middle of Vancouver, the signs in the parking lots don’t list PayByPhone or HotSpot as options. Instead, the sign says, you can pay with a different app called ZipBy.
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Or one called Park Mobile.
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Or you can download the Passport app.
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Or something called Honk.
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There is an option to pay with a credit card at a machine, but there are many times more parking spaces than machines, and so there can be long lines at busy times. Other times — including both of my two most recent visits to the park — the machines are out of order, leaving you with no option other than an app, which you may not already have installed on your phone.
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This situation has driven me to distraction a few times. Not the most technologically savvy person, I thought the problem might be me.
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But I was reassured last week, when the internet’s pre-eminent satirist of Vancouver life took aim at the city’s proliferation of parking apps. On Friday, the Instagram account SeabusMemes posted a video of the American media personality and music producer D.J. Khaled repeating his trademark phrase — “Another one! Another one! Another one!” — while the logo for PayByPhone pops up, followed by Passport Parking, then ParkMobile, ZipBy, HonkMobile, and finally HotSpot.
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So I’m not the only Vancouver resident feeling parking-app fatigue.
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Far from it, says Vancouver Coun. Lucy Maloney. She frequently gets an earful about this very subject from Vancouver residents, including those in her own family.
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“One of the main complaints about parking — other than just having to pay for parking — that I hear from residents of the city of Vancouver, is that they really dislike having to download new apps to pay for parking,” Maloney said. “You’re trying to get somewhere on time, and then you have to frick around with downloading an app that’s not your usual parking app. Well, it drives me mad, too, let me tell you.”
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There might be good reasons to allow for competition among different parking app companies, Maloney said, “but people hate having not being able to use the same parking app right across the Lower Mainland.”
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You can’t even use the same app on every lot owned by the City of Vancouver.
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Vancouver’s largest operator of parking lots is EasyPark, which is majority-owned by the city. Despite the fact the city owns most of EasyPark voting shares, the two entities can’t seem to agree on a parking app.
