To A PF, The World Of Parking Is Doing Anything But Standing Still

Pity the poor standalone parking meter, nestled between communities' sidewalks and streets. A dozen years ago, five million were scattered across the U.S.. Today, according to the International Parking Institute, no one even bothers to count them any more. New York City is preparing to abandon its 85,000 meters to a PF-fueled mobile system, joining Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh with similar plans.

The movement is hardly surprising. Many of those metal poles could only handle coins and retrofitting them for magstripe--let alone EMV or NFC--is expensive and short-sighted. To get much of the money from those poles requires a municipal employee/contractor to physically move from pole to pole. The system for fining those who disobey the parking rules is equally inefficient. Enter Jon Ziglar, the CEO of PF Parkmobile, whose company is behind many of those municipal parking meter obliteration efforts. His vision is far cleaner. A mobile app pays for the space and can even text a driver when the time is about to run out. But this gets better. Parkmobile is in pilots today with Ford and BMW to integrate the app directly into cars. Marry the efficiency of a mobile app with a smartcar that can park itself and parking takes on a delightfully 21st Century shine.