Smart ParkingViolation notice: your vehicle is parked in the parking area around Esmarchstraße 27 without a valid parking ticket. So far, we have transferred hundreds and hundreds of Euros to our pen pal, Berlin’s chief of police – with a feeling of remorse and discontent nonetheless. After all, most of the violations were not committed intentionally but instead due to lack of coins. So there we are, with our super-connected car that can detect rain, has remote-control-parking and can stream music from our smartphone, but we just can’t hack the ticket machine. There HAS to be a better way. And there is: Smart Parking powered by Mobile City. Got it. And there have been no more letters from an official authority since. There’s not really much more to say. An app that does what it should. Surely, there are probably plenty of similar apps around and everyone will find the most suitable. And we’ve definitely found ours. It’s called Smart Parking, it’s green and this is how it works: stick the identification badge on windscreen (parking attendants are, of course, digitally linked), open app, choose one of the listed ticket machines, type in licence plate number, select parking time and go! Payments are billed to your mobile. Really, nothing to it. Oh, and before your parking session runs out, the app even sends a text message to inform you. If you register, things get even easier: The app remembers your licence plate, the amount due is automatically charged to a refillable 15 Euro prepaid debit card, and the bill is neatly filed. The best part of it: you don’t need to estimate your parking time anymore. Just press play to start and press stop before you get back in your car. When was the last time you paid 23 cents for a parking session? Exactly. Please, keep the change! And remember to press the stop button! We forgot once… But we did get a refund. This is a good thing. |
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