Ward Dene Coun. Aaron Paquette wants to hit the brakes on the city's transition from physical machines to mobile payments for parking in city-owned spots.
On March 28, the city announced that it will transition all EPark to a mobile-only payment system for city-owned spots across Edmonton. Crews started removing physical EPark machines starting on April 14. Drivers must now use the HotSpot parking app, a desktop, or a phone call to pay for parking. The city's rationale for the shift is that the machines require replacement to accept chip and pin payments, and that upgrading them would cost $2.8 million plus annual operating costs.
But Paquette told Taproot he will introduce a motion at the April 22 and 23 council meeting that asks the city to pause its removal of city-owned parking machines.
"It's due to the concerns I've heard out of the community. People feel like they don't really have a good grasp on what this is going to look like and how it's going to roll out," Paquette said, adding that seniors in particular are worried about the adjustment. "If there's a way to increase the communications on this to also encourage (city) administration to maybe fast-track improvements to the app and see if there are alternative options available to accommodate people in the transition, that would be pretty great in my book."
Paquette originally intended to ask city administration to find money in the capital budget to upgrade the machines rather than remove them. However, after discussion with administration, he said that might not be possible due to legal issues. "I made the motion absolutely in good faith, but after talking with city lawyers, there might be a bit of a snag there — but I probably can't talk about that outside of outside of council, because that would be a legal matter," he said.
The motion could be amended during debate at the council meeting when council puts it to a vote.
The co-hosts of Speaking Municipally, Taproot's civic affairs podcast, discussed the changes on the April 4 episode. Co-host Mack Male said the app is not user-friendly, can be confusing, and argued it has several extraneous features that don't apply to Edmonton. "I think this news would be easier to take if the mobile app that we had to do these payments was better — if it didn't suck," he said.