After years of constantly broken meters, unpaid tickets and absorbent operational costs, the Municipal Parking Department and city of Detroit have opted for a high-tech on-street parking system that was launched today.
“For decades, residents and visitors have all been frustrated by our parking system, and our hardworking parking enforcement officers have usually gotten all the blame,” said Gary Brown, City of Detroit Group Executive for Operations. “But those days are over, because thanks in part to the ParkDetroit app, the city of Detroit will be home to the most comprehensive and customer friendly on-street parking system in the entire country.”
The press conference held on the historic Avenue of Fashion included words from members of the Avenue of Fashion Business Assoc. and the Independent Business Assoc. and Norm White, City of Detroit Municipal Parking Director.
Parking attendants, Brown and others showed the public how the new meters operate on Livernois.
Detroit is now home to a new app, ParkDetroit, and way of paying for on-street parking. The pay-by-plate instead of space is currently used in multiple major cities across the United States.
The app provides users a 24-hour, seven days a week hotline to add money to their meter.
The mobile app allows those parking to add more time with just a click on the app. The license plate based system allows for more accurate tracking and execution of violations for parking attendants. City officials believe that the new system will help decrease the amount of tickets issued.
“The overarching goal is to write less tickets, to give people every opportunity to feed the meter so they do not get a ticket and to spur economic development,” said Brown upon breaking the news that the new parking system would come to Detroit. “This system we know will produce less tickets because you are going to have more options to pay the meter.”
Prior to the installation of new meters, Detroit had been paying $32 to issue and process the then $30 parking violation. The new system will reduce annual operation and maintenance costs.
Parking violation prices will remain $45 per violation. The increase occurred on June 1 of this year and marked the first change in ticket prices in over a decade.
“I know I can speak for all the business owners along Livernois in saying that parking has historically been a major challenge for those of us doing business in this area,” said Rufus Bartell, owner of Simply Casual Clothing and president of Independent Business Association. “I think I can also say that we are all pleased with this new direction and the city’s approach to implementing a parking system that better fits our needs.”
For more information on the new system, including instruction videos, go to www.ParkDetroit.us.
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