Home to the Alamo, River Walk, and a downtown that draws visitors from around the world, San Antonio, Texas is the seventh largest city in the country. It’s also a Southwest destination that has spent the last six years rethinking how people pay to park, working alongside Passport every step of the way.
An Extension of the Team
Martin Ruiz is now Right of Way Manager for the City of San Antonio. Before that, he spent seven years as Parking Operations & Enforcement Manager, part of more than 27 years with the city overall. Ask him about Passport, and he doesn’t describe a typical client relationship.
“I form as much of a personal relationship as I can with my Passport friends. Anytime I go to a conference, you guys welcome me with open arms. It really feels like an invested, mutually supportive relationship.” – Martin Ruiz, Right of Way Manager
The partnership began in 2019 and has held steady through staff transitions, budget cycles, and a citywide rollout. Martin points to Passport’s client success team as a big part of that, a group he’s worked with closely enough over the years that the relationship feels like he added teammates rather than a vendor.
From Rollout to Reality
The rollout started in San Antonio’s highest-visibility, highest-volume zones, coordinated through a citywide inventory of paid parking areas and signage between Passport and the city’s parking operations team. Martin described an implementation with minimal disruption, and no real learning curve for city staff or the residents using it.
On the enforcement side, the city runs two separate tools today: a handheld device for issuing citations, and Passport’s OpsMan Mobile for checking paid status by zone. Officers can see who’s paid, but issuing a citation still means switching to a second device entirely.
“Having a single device with added features would improve the delivery of the citation,” explains Martin. “It would mean increased safety and less time at the vehicle, plus a more intuitive reporting process and better collaboration with the municipal courts.”
It’s a reminder that even a strong partnership keeps finding room to grow.
The Shift to Digital Infrastructure
Before Passport, paying to park in San Antonio meant cash, credit, or coins, fed directly into a meter or kiosk. Legacy meters took coins only. There was no way to see what was happening across the city’s parking footprint in real time.
Implementing Passport Parking alongside Passport’s OpsMan Mobile for enforcement visibility gave San Antonio more than a new way to pay. It laid the foundation for a digital parking ecosystem, one built to flex as the city’s needs continue to evolve.
“We’ve received quite a few responses from the community indicating that it’s very easy to park, and they favor our business model,” Martin shares.
The ability to extend a session from a phone, without walking back to the meter, was one of the changes residents noticed most.
Advice for Other Cities and What’s Next
Martin’s advice for other cities comes from watching the industry closely, both at conferences and in ongoing conversations with peer municipalities. Do your homework, he says. Build a wish list of what you actually need in a vendor, and pay close attention to what their customer service is really like day to day. He’s just as direct about the budget realities cities are facing right now: the right partner isn’t always the lowest bid, it’s the one that delivers the best return on investment.
And above all, own your data. For Martin, that’s non-negotiable. As cities lean harder on reporting to justify budgets, track compliance, and make the case for new technology, that information needs to stay visible and accessible to the city itself, not buried in a system only a vendor can unlock. It’s leverage a city should always have on hand.
That same directness has shaped how San Antonio approaches its infrastructure, even as Martin steps into a new chapter with the City, a natural step after years spent building out the curb. It’s that throughline, more than any single role, that’s kept this partnership with Passport strong for six years, and counting.