City of Tucson to Offer New Way to Pay Parking Tickets
Originally appeared on News 4 Tucson
MARCH 17, 2016, BY LAUREN REIMER
Parking tickets are no fun, but soon, they will be easier to pay off.
In the next month or two, the city of Tucson’s parking manager, Park Tucson, will let you pay for citations through an app on your smart phone.
The city launched its ‘GoTucson’ app about a year ago. Right now, the app can be used to pay for parking, bus and streetcar fare.
In the next month or two, the app will get a new feature: parking ticket payment.
“It’s the trend with other industries,” said Park Tucson Administrator Donovan Durband. “So why not parking?”
Downtown for a meeting, Katie McClinton stopped to download the app on her phone.
“I didn’t have enough coins today, so I was thinking it might be better to do it that way,” she said.
If that meter runs out and she gets a ticket, she will soon be able to pay it off using that same app.
“I imagine it would be convenient, especially if you don’t live in town. That would be nice,” said McClinton. “Although, I don’t know why you would get the app necessarily if you’re not from town.”
The hope is it will increase payment compliance.
“So that fewer of those cases become delinquencies of the court,” said Durband. “That becomes a lot more work for the court to do, and then ultimately some of those go to collection agencies.”
For people who do not want to use a phone, the city also launched a new online ticket payment portal last Wednesday, at PayYourParkingTicket.com
“Less time in court, less time to get more tickets,” said Adam Gibson, as he added more change to his meter.
Of course, there is still the old fashioned way.
“You can call us up at the office and give your credit card over the phone to pay,” said Durband. “You can come into the office, you can leave the payment in our overnight drop box, you can mail it in.”
All transactions done through the app come with a small fee of 25 cents.