Worth a read: Councilman Raises Issues With App-Based Parking Meters Downtown
A Jamestown city councilman tried to pay a meter with a quarter. The meter ate it. He downloaded the app. Paid $0.58 for 30 minutes instead of $0.25 — because of a $0.33 “convenience fee.” Extended by an hour, another $1.99. A $0.75 parking session cost him just under three dollars.
The article notes the vendor is making more off those meters than the city is. That’s not a glitch. That’s the business model working as designed.
This comes up more than people admit during procurement. A vendor earning on convenience fees has fundamentally different incentives than a municipality that wants affordable, accessible parking for its residents. Those two things aren’t always compatible, and eventually the tension surfaces at a city council meeting.
When we built the payment side of OPSCOM, we made a deliberate call to keep convenience fees with the client, not the platform. Our revenue comes from the operation, not from nickel-and-diming the person feeding a meter. It keeps our incentives pointed in the right direction and it means the city controls what parking actually costs their residents.
Probably an obvious thing in hindsight, but it’s surprisingly easy to sign a vendor contract without ever asking the question: who does this pricing model actually benefit?