The City of Newburyport is a historic Massachusetts seaport with a vibrant tourist scene. In 2015, the City partnered with Passport to launch Passport’s mobile payment solution for parking, allowing residents and tourists to pay for and extend parking sessions from the convenience of their smartphone.
Since launching the Passport Parking app, Newburyport has experienced consistent year-over-year increases in both utilization and revenue. In 2022, the City reported a 110 percent increase in app utilization and a 124 percent increase in revenue (compared to 2019), and an increase in parking session extensions, which provide a simple way for users to extend their parking sessions remotely. In the summer of 2022, the City added QR codes to its parking signage and saw a 37 percent increase in transactions (compared to 2021). The neutral signage, added convenience of the QR codes and the session extensions through the Passport Parking app likely contributed to the overall increase in transactions and revenue.
Fortunately, Newburyport has seen a steady rise in parking activity since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit. The number of parking sessions through the Passport Parking app more than doubled from the end of 2020 to the end of 2021, indicating an increased preference for a digital form of payment and healthy recovery for businesses and downtown activity.
In addition to utilizing Passport’s mobile payment technology, Newburyport also leverages Passport’s platform to digitally issue and manage parking permits and to enforce its curb through license plate recognition (LPR) technology. With an online citation management system, drivers use an online portal to pay for tickets quickly and easily, resulting in improved payment compliance and higher citation revenue for the operation. In fact, online permit payments have increased from 40 percent in 2019 to 66 percent in 2022 and more than 80 percent of citations are paid online.
Thanks to Passport’s open APIs and partnerships, the City has its eye on additional feature enhancements that will continue to enhance both the overall success of the parking program and the constituent experience in downtown Newburyport.
Discover the benefits of cross-product reporting capabilities within Passport’s mobility management platform in our latest eGuide, The Power of Centralized Data and Insights. Also, learn how you can leverage Passport’s cloud-based mobility management system to optimize your enforcement operations by downloading our Digital Parking Enforcement eGuide.