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San Bruno council approves Park Mobile to expand downtown mobile payments
Summary
After staff recommended Park Mobile as the city’s mobile parking payment vendor, council authorized a five‑year general services agreement. Park Mobile will integrate with existing T2 kiosks, offer bilingual support, a backend dashboard and options for non‑smartphone users; council discussed transition, signage and a small per‑transaction fee.
The San Bruno City Council authorized staff to negotiate and execute a five‑year agreement with Park Mobile for downtown mobile parking payments on Oct. 14.
Anna Morales, parking program manager, summarized the RFP process (five proposals) and staff’s recommendation of Park Mobile because of its technical readiness, enforcement integration with T2 kiosks, bilingual customer support, and marketing tools. Park Mobile representatives demonstrated the app workflow, back‑end dashboard, T2 integration and user features such as map‑based zone selection, session extension and QR/text checkout options for users who do not want the full app.
Park Mobile said the app typically achieves about 50% adoption in the first year (with a goal of 70% or higher) and provides multilingual customer service and an IVR/text checkout option for people without smartphones. The company also described a validation feature that could let merchants validate parking sessions for customers.
Staff provided sample pricing comparisons showing that a $1.50 on‑street parking session at a kiosk would appear as $1.80 through Park Mobile (a roughly $0.30 per‑transaction user fee). City staff said that Park Mobile’s 24/7 customer service, reminders and enforcement readiness would offset minimal revenue differences and that the platform could reduce citation volume and improve compliance with better user experience and reminders.
Council members stressed the importance of a careful transition plan, clear signage to avoid confusion, options for non‑smartphone users (prepaid payment cards and a call‑in option), and a period of leniency on enforcement to reduce community complaints during rollout. The council approved the resolution to execute a contract with Park Mobile (unanimous vote).
Next steps: staff to finalize contract language with city attorney review, coordinate implementation and signage, set a public outreach plan with Park Mobile to drive adoption, and implement a phased transition while T2 kiosks remain available.
