Pay By Phone Parking App to Be Available in Scarsdale

Village Trustees posed for a photo before the March 19 election. Pictured from left to right: Lena Crandall, Carl Finger, Seth Ross, Dan Hochvert, Jane Veron, Matt Callaghan and Justin Arest.Good news for those frustrated with feeding parking meters in the Village. At the meeting of the Scarsdale Board of Trustees on Tuesday February 26, the trustees passed a resolution for a professional services agreement with PANGO to provide pay by phone apps to park in Scarsdale.

In order to use the service, users simply download the PANGO app, complete a user profile and provide credit card information. The parking app uses GPS to identify the users zone. The user can select their desired time and authorize payment. The app can also prevent users from adding time to the app once the maximum time limit has been reached for a particular meter.

PANGO will collect fees and then remit the fees, less a convenience fee, back to the Village. The fee retained by PANGO for Scarsdale will be 16% of the parking rate paid – meaning Scarsdale will receive 84% of the parking revenue.

Drivers will also be able to pay for parking tickets via the app, and for those fees PANGO will retain 12%.

Parkers will still be able to use a regular meter if they wish and the pay-by-phone will be an additional option.

Introducing the resolution at the meeting, Trustee Veron explained that the Village has been studying how to make parking easier in the Village. In 2017 they conducted a test of single and multi-space meters and learned that residents found the smart meters confusing. From the study they determined that residents preferred to pay for parking via a phone app and therefore the Village investigated several mobile app providers.

Unlike the smart meters, working with PANGO required no upfront investment in new parking meters or equipment by the Village.

She gave kudos to assistant Village Manager Ingrid Richards for her work in negotiating a favorable contract for the Village.