Council to vote on parking modernization in coming weeks

On Monday, the Birmingham City Council’s Transportation Committee heard presentations on several proposed changes to Birmingham’s parking ordinance that would allow for mobile payments, among other improvements to the city’s parking infrastructure.

Those items have passed through committee and will be coming to the full Council within the next several weeks.

“For a long time we’ve needed to modernize our on-street parking,” said Councilor Darrell O’Quinn, Chair of the Transportation Committee. “We essentially have the same technology that was around when the parking meter was invented decades ago. In many cities that you visit you’re able to use either a card or a smartphone for on-street parking and that is something that we’ve wanted to put in place for a long time in Birmingham. We’re finally moving forward with that.”

The Council will be considering a contract with ParkMobile, a vendor who would be charged with processing mobile payments to the city’s parking meters. These changes will be made by placing signage and stickers on the existing meters and will be at no cost to the city. The price for the meters will not change, however there is a 45 cent processing fee that will be charged by the vendor.

ParkMobile operates in over 3,000 locations across North America and serves over 17 million users. People looking to park can either download the ParkMobile app or call a 1–800 number to reserve a parking spot. The app will allow users to add time onto their meters remotely.

O’Quinn said these improvements are part of an overall effort to better manage the operation of on-street parking in Birmingham.

“We’ve had to address some of our parking enforcement such that sworn officers can issue citations for those types of offenses,” O’Quinn said. “Residential parking enforcement is something that we are also trying to move towards so our parking enforcement officers have been moved under the police department and that’s something that we’re looking at to help in the residential areas. It’s not secret that, especially on the Southside around St. Vincents and UAB, there’s a lot of illegal parking that occurs in residential areas and we actually have researched a plan to address those types of issues.”

O’Quinn believes that the modernization of on-street parking will increase revenues from collections. Once the contract is approved by the Council the new mobile payment system is expected to be implemented by the vendor within 60 to 90 days.