Easy-to-use parking ticket app

Meter Feeder uses GPS to work out how much to charge for parking and enables drivers to pay digitally.

Many parking meters have gone digital, with big cities such as San Francisco and London enabling drivers to pay on their smartphone. But many of these systems involve long-winded processes that are almost as inconvenient as fumbling for spare change, so residents often don’t bother and risk getting a ticket. Now, Meter Feeder is an app that hopes to change this and in doing so, earn more money for the municipalities.

To begin, drivers download the app to their smartphone or visit the website and allow it to access the phone’s GPS tracking. Then, Meter Feeder analyzes the customer’s geolocation to determine the pricing of their parking spot, and users can pay the meter digitally. Drivers can even receive a warning five minutes before their ticket expires, or extend their time without returning to the spot.

Parking attendants can use a Meter Feeder tablet and printer to check tickets and dispense fines — they simply search a car’s number plate and print a QR code ticket on-the-spot if the fare hasn’t been paid. Drivers can scan the code and pay their fine easily on their smartphone.

Meter Feeder is particularly convenient for smaller cities that can’t afford to replace old coin-operated meters with new digital machines, because the system can work in conjunction with the existing meters. Could the system be used in private carparks too?