MeterFeeder – Case Study: St. Marys, PA Parking

May 09, 2019

MeterFeeder – Case Study: St. Marys, PA Parking

The Problem

The City of St. Marys, Pennsylvania has spent the last few years using only physical parking meters. The municipality had a difficult time tracking payments, parking usage, and ticket payments. The old system was entirely physical and required a lot of manual data entry from the city employees. City residents were frustrated with the antiquated coin-operated meters and lack of digital payment options. The city noted that many residents and business owners receive tickets on a nearly daily basis. This created compliance issues as well as parker frustration.

MeterFeeder’s Solution

In early 2019, St. Marys consulted MeterFeeder to provide a new all-digital parking system for the municipality. The solution provided included implementation of MeterFeeder’s parking app, enforcement tools, management interface, support for a permit system, and support for MeterFeeder’s patent-pending Pay-By-Vehicle fleet management solution.

The MeterFeeder app allows drivers to pay for parking with digital payments via their smartphone in any of the St. Mary’s parking zones. The app uses geo-location technology to determine where a driver is parking to automatically place them in the right zones.

The enforcement solution for the officers of St Marys includes an Android tablet and rugged bluetooth printer. Officers are able to check to see if a vehicle has paid for parking, and issue tickets easily if they haven’t.

City managers are able to use the management tools to track parking payments, ticket payments, issued tickets, voided tickets, leave comments on cases, and create daily, weekly, or monthly reports to monitor revenue and compliance.

In the future, St. Marys is considering using MeterFeeder’s technology to create new parking zones that are digital payment or digital permit only.

Reception and Results

In May of 2019, MeterFeeder reached out to St. Marys PR specialist Hannah Brock and Police Chief Nicklas to get some feedback about how the changes have been performing the past 3-4 months. Here is what we learned”

In just 3 months, 20% of all parking transactions were going through the MeterFeeder app. This number is trending upward.
Over 50% of all issued tickets are paid through the MeterFeeder app or on MeterFeeder.com/ticket. This new convenience has reduced strain on the municipality and made residents happy.
MeterFeeder is used by many government employees and local business owners. Business owners recommend it to their clientele.
People who used to habitually get tickets on a daily or weekly basis are now no longer getting tickets.
- This ticket revenue has been replaced by daily parking revenue.
St Marys is now able to track things like revenue, tickets issued, and tickets paid thanks to the management interface and reporting tools. Previously St Marys had no way to keep track of these things in such a robust and quick way.

Conclusion

St Marys’ on-boarding period is now over, and they are now moving into month five of using MeterFeeder. The city and its daily parkers are very happy with the improvements made by MeterFeeder. Meterfeeder and the City of St Marys will now begin pushing more marketing material and PR across the city to let citizens know that MeterFeeder is the new, better way to pay for parking.

Written by Corey McDonough (corey@meterfeeder.com)

If you’d like to learn more about MeterFeeder, Pay-By-Vehicle, or permits for your parking zones, please email Elliott O’Brien.

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Learn more about MeterFeeder at www.meterfeeder.com