After years of the university using ParkMobile, the city has implemented the app for Uptown parking. Some have received unwarranted tickets when using the app to pay.
In December, Christopher McDuffy parked his car, took out his smartphone, tapped his screen a few times and paid for parking. When he returned, a parking ticket was staring at him.
Ohio University implemented the use of ParkMobile, an app to pay for parking, in 2014. After 66,538 individuals used the app for parking on campus in 2015, the city of Athens added the app as a way to pay for parking Uptown in December.
“I would say I have gotten 10 or more tickets while using ParkMobile,” McDuffy, a Hocking College student, said. “They also gave me a boot on my car once.”
After each instance, McDuffy said he has gone to parking services to go through the long process of fixing it.
Martin Paulins, director of Transportation and Parking Services, said the ParkMobile system goes down occasionally.
Parking Enforcement uses an iPhone 6, Paulins said, to check if a vehicle is legally parked. The data is loaded from ParkMobile to the office’s T2 Flex, a software system. When that fails, it could cause someone to get an unwarranted ticket.
If that happens, he said students can come to the Transportation and Parking Services office to show the email receipt to prove a payment was made.
Parking Services is located at 100 Factory St.
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“Feedback has been nothing but positive,” Paulins said, adding that individuals rarely get a ticket when using the app.
When students or residents of Athens venture off-campus to the Uptown area, they can use ParkMobile.
“We wanted to give people the opportunity to pay for their parking with an alternative source using their smartphone instead of needing to carry quarters around all the time,” Ron Lucas, Athens deputy service-safety director, said.
In December, ParkMobile’s first month Uptown, there were about 230 transactions, Lucas said. In the first few weeks of January, there were 733 transactions.
“We almost quadrupled when Ohio University came back into session,” Lucas said.
Discussions with the university about its success with the app helped the city make the decision to make ParkMobile available Uptown, Lucas said. He added that he is unaware if the city has experienced any problems with the app so far.
One problem leading to ticket confusion could be when someone parks in a spot for more than the two-hour limit, Lucas said, which is posted on meters.
Other parking spaces Uptown include some four-hour handicap parking spaces and a few 10-hour parking spaces, Lucas said.
Before ParkMobile, parking enforcement officers would walk Uptown to each meter to check to see if it was expired. With ParkMobile, parking enforcement officers check the meter and also check their handheld devices to cross reference license plate numbers with the app.
“We put Wi-Fi hotspots in them, so now they have a live connection to the park mobile interface,” Lucas said.
Lori Lawrence, a parking enforcement clerk at the Athens Police Department, said about 40 people use the app each day, and she expects usage to go up as Spring Semester continues.
“It’s good," Lawrence said. "Everything has been going smoothly with (it)."
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