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Downtown Tulsa Parking App Goes Live

Matt Trotter
/
KWGS

No change? No problem.

The ParkMobile app is now live, letting drivers pay for on-street parking in downtown Tulsa from their smartphones. While scrounging for nickels, dimes and quarters is no longer necessary, the app isn’t making cash obsolete.

"It just adds an additional method to pay. We will continue with pay stations and the parking meters until we can get the old meters replaced," said City of Tulsa Public Safety Security Manager Mark Weston.

Meters will continue to be available in some areas as the city installs more pay stations that accept cash or credit cards. The Tulsa Arts District is the only area completely switched to pay stations and the new pay-by-plate system.

ParkMobile users will pay the same rates as people paying with cash or credit, but they’ll enter their license plate and a zone number displayed where they’re parking.

"We have either an Android or an iPad device, and we will use an app that we received to either type in the tag number or type in the zone and look at all the tag numbers," Weston said.

ParkMobile covers around 1,500 parking spaces now. City hall is aiming for 2,500 by the end of the year. Officials have said convenience was the main reason for beginning the transition to pay-by-plate parking downtown.

"Leveraging technology, giving something to the folks to make it easier to park and pay so they don’t have to get out of their car and go to the meter. They can get out of their car and go directly to what it is they’re doing," Weston said.

Parking rates, hours and areas remain the same. City leaders decided in January to hold off on changing those until the parking system was more reliable.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.