Downtown Parking Pilot with Passport

The City of Santa Rosa is launching a 90-day pilot program on Wednesday, August 27, 2015, for a pay by mobile phone payment alternative for metered parking, offered by Passport. The program offers a method by which customers can pay for parking via an application on their smart phone or via interactive voice response system on any cell phone. The pilot program will be conducted on 4th Street from Railroad Square to E Street, and in the Depot surface parking lot at Railroad Square.

Passport also offers a merchant validation program, which allows merchants to validate customers on-street metered parking via the mobile payment technology. We encourage downtown businesses to consider joining the validation program offering an incentive to your best customers (and soon to be best customers!). You can offer vouchers that cover partial or full costs of parking, set an expiration date through a unique code. Your account will not be charged if that code is not used. For more information: https://ppprk.com/apps/validation/#dashboard

In addition, customers using the pay-by-phone application can set up their account to receive text message alerts letting them know their time is about to expire, and gives them the option to extend their paid parking time, up to the posted time limits. This feature adds convenience for parkers, as they are not required to return to the parking meter to extend their time when running late, and can do so remotely while shopping or dining.

During the initial 90-day pilot (the pilot may go up to 6 months), feedback will be obtained from users via an online survey and hard copy surveys are available to downtown businesses to place on their counters. City staff will visit businesses to distribute surveys in the upcoming days.

For more information on the merchant validation program contact:
Nathan Berry, 704-909-7329 or email at Nathan.berry@gopassport.com
www.GoPassport.com

For more general information on the parking pilot contact:
Kim Nadeau, 707-543-3464 or email at knadeau@srcity.org