On Sunday I took my out-of-town guests (S & J from Austin, TX) to Poulsbo for some sightseeing and to browse the galleries on Front Street. It might have been an expensive trip for me even though I didn’t buy anything downtown. That’s because I didn’t try to figure out how to use ParkMobile (see photo), which is the only way to pay for parking in the Anderson Parkway lot.
Paid parking in downtown Poulsbo started on August 15th. Before that it was free with time limits in some of the parking zones. City leaders will tell you that paid parking is the best way to ensure there will be a continuous turnover of parking spots for visitors. I would argue that adding a new source of revenue was also important.
I don’t have a great excuse for not paying. As a rule I avoid paying for things by phone especially when I need to download an app on the fly to make a payment. I prefer to install the app at home and read about it before trying it for the first time. In addition, I’m not familiar enough with the other parking areas in Poulsbo to know if any are still free or allow you to pay the old-fashioned way with a debit card at a kiosk. Plus, as seniors, my guests and I were willing to walk some to get to the Front Street shops but not too far. The Anderson Parkway lot is the ideal place to park, so I ignored the ParkMobile sign.
When we got back to the car after an hour or so of shopping, there was no paper ticket on my windshield. But after reading about how Poulsbo’s new parking system works, I am not home free. It is not an honor system. I suppose the city might send me a warning as a first-time offender of a still-new system, but that’s not the way to bet. It’s more likely that I will get a digital citation.
The process works by having a ParkMobile employee periodically scan the license plates in the parking areas they have contracted to operate. A list of plate numbers that haven’t paid gets uploaded and sent to the city of Poulsbo. A city employee runs the plates to get the mailing information for each plate from the DOL. (Poulsbo can do that because they have a police department, and police officers can access the DOL database.) A citation gets issued and mailed to the parking violator. The whole process takes minimal labor and sounds like it happens quickly. I should know soon if I was included in Sunday’s dragnet.
One irony is that even with this high-tech system Poulsbo doesn’t recover the cost of the parking itself. But they can issue a hefty $60 parking fine instead. Ouch.
Whether I get a fine or a warning, to show there are no hard feelings I downloaded the ParkMobile app yesterday and read up on it. So I’m ready for my next trip to Poulsbo although I plan to wait until downtown parking drops to winter rates ($1 an hour vs. $3 an hour during the rest of the year). Plus I think I read somewhere that the Kingston ferry passenger parking lot offers payment using ParkMobile. Gotta be ready for that too.
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