MACON, Ga. — If you're heading to downtown Macon to enjoy a night out or if you live or work downtown there's a new way to pay for parking. It's called ParkMobile and it replaces the former PassportParking app.
Once you find that parking spot downtown, you'll notice there's a bright green sign, it's the ParkMobile app. You can scan the QR code and park for up to 3 hours. You can also download the app, that's what Alex Morrison, the Executive Director of the Urban Development Authority, suggests.
"The reason we have the app is because it is by far the most convenient way to pay," Morrison said.
To use the app, type in the zone you decide to park in then select the amount of time you plan to use the parking spot.
Ashley Pardington lives and works in downtown Macon
"It sends you a message when you run out of time so you can update it if you need to add more time or not," Pardington said.
It can save you time to running out to the meter to extend the time and saves your card information to the app, similar to PayPal.
"I am very virtual, so I use Apple Pay for everything. So, the Apple Pay works well with the ParkMobile itself so I can use that and access it easily," Pardington said.
She likes ParkMobile because of the apps reach. ParkMobile is used in thousands of locations across the U.S.
"We're getting more tourism and there's a lot of population and stuff like that. Any big city you go to is going to use something like this," she said.
The previous app had one zone for all of downtown.
"We now have zones that are by block. So, you can look and see how many spaces are available by block before you go," Morrison said.
Of course, you can still pay the old-fashioned way.
Morrison says the Urban Development Authority is directly managing the new parking app and will be enforcing tickets. If you've got an existing ticket, you can pay that at parkmacon.com.
Enforcement for the new parking system starts Friday.