Thomas Janeck of New Parking, a Pay parking with cell phone provider, weighs in with his comments:
First of all, let me ask this question.
Why are cell parking companies in business?
I think it is safe to assume that their “raison d’etre” is the same
as any other commercial enterprise – to make money for their
shareholders.It is therefore clear that a pay by cell company needs revenues which can come from two sources
– end users (drivers)
– parking operators (cities, private operators)or combination of both.
The argument for “driver pays” model is that it provides additional
convenience for many drivers to use a cell phone to pay for parking and
there certainly is merit in that argument. As Neil pointed out, pay by
cell is not a mandatory service and as such those who do not like it
are not forced to use it.New Parking viewpoint is slightly different, though.
We see pay by cell in essence as any other form of parking equipment
– meters, paystations, in car meters etc etc. The difference, of
course, is that pay by cell is software and does not really require any
on street or in car hardware to operate but its essence is the same –
it is one of the options that allow parking operators to collect money
from drivers who chose to park on their property.If we accept the premise that pay by cell is just one of several
ways allowing parking operator to collect money then it is logical to
expect that pay by cell ought to be treated the same way as single
space parking meters, paystations, etc. i.e. cost of equipment.And this is in essence business model deployed by New Parking – we
prefer to charge the operator and not the driver as we believe that it
is in operator’s best interest to provide as many payment options as
possible, and the more convenient and efficient the better.Having said that, we recognize that it is the parking operator that
has final say in how to run the business and so we certainly are
prepared to charge user fees if operator so desires, it is just that
our recommendation is not do so.Finally, New Parking has a very strict and simple privacy policy –
we will never sell or provide any personal identifiable information to
anyone without authorization of the end user – except when required by
law to do so.
Thomas Janacek
Founder & CEO, New Parking Inc.
Anyone else out there with an opinion…
JVH
