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Now people in Halifax have the ability to use credit cards at parking meters and receive messages when their time is up.
Halifax has launched a new parking app on Monday that offers people more ways to manage their parking use.
City parking meters still accept coins, but people can also pay a monthly or annual fee to use the HotSpot phone to access more options.
The app allows people to pay more to prolong parking times and drivers who decide to leave their space in advance can be reimbursed when they have not used it.
The service costs $ 2 per month or $ 20 per year.
The app parking meter allows people to pay by credit card. (Paul Palmeter / CBC)
The app, developed by a Fredericton company, is already used in Moncton, Saint John, Fredericton, Charlottetown and Bridgewater, N.S. People who have the app can use it in one of those places.
Other Canadian cities offer similar free parking apps: for example, Calgary uses My Parking, while in Vancouver it's PayByPhone.
The Waterfront Development Corp. plans to start using HotSpots even in central Halifax lots, according to a city statement. The municipality had initially planned to activate the program this summer.
The HotSpot tariff allows you to recover costs
Halifax chose the HotSpot app to maintain the "no cost" service for the municipality, spokesman Nick Ritcey said.
"HotSpot pays 100% of the money generated by the parking session to the municipality, which recovers its costs through the annual subscription fee," he said in an e-mail on Monday.
He said that the agreement also allows the municipality to keep parking rates the same for mobile payment and payment with coins.
"I can not talk about how to pay for mobile parking in other cities, but all providers should have a revenue model, so if they're not making money on app subscriptions, they're likely to be paid at a flat rate or for base transaction from that city / municipality, "Ritcey said in the e-mail.
