Thursday, July 10 -- that's when free three-hour on street parking in downtown Salem ends, and the new era of paid parking up to twelve hours begins.
These signs started appearing more than two weeks ago. I took this photo on June 19. It would have confused me if my Tai Chi instructor, who leases space on Court Street, hadn't posted a notice from the City of Salem saying that paid parking doesn't start until July 1, later postponed to July 10.
Here's excerpts from a June 26 Salem Reporter story, "Concern, confusion as Salem rolls out paid downtown parking."
New signs in downtown Salem indicating drivers must pay to park for up to 12 hours are causing confusion for visitors, but city officials said street parking is still free until the city’s new parking program goes into effect on July 10.
The new signs were meant to be installed alongside new pay stations that would have provided relevant information to visitors, but those machines were held up at a shipping port because of impacts related to tariffs, City Director of Community Planning and Development Kristin Retherford told Salem Reporter.
As of Thursday, the pay stations are beginning to be installed, she said.
...Ken Haseltine, the owner of Olson’s Fine Flowers at 499 Court St. N.E., objected to the 12-hour time limit for parking. He said it would make more sense to have 90-minute paid zones instead, and he thinks the rollout of the program is sloppy.
“When the signs went up last week, it was complete chaos. Needless to say. Because people were running in, ‘Where is the pay station!? I don’t know how to pay, or where to pay!,’ instead of covering up the signs which is what they should have done,” Haseltine said. “What does a trash bag cost? To me it was just a ridiculous rollout of this thing.”
Haseltine said the new parking system won’t affect his businesses as much as others because he said about 70% of his business is done over the phone or online. He said he feels bad for restaurants and coffee shops because the pay stations could drive people away given they will have to pay for parking to grab a cup of coffee.
Hopefully actually paying for parking will go more smoothly than the botched rollout of the parking signs did. I've downloaded the iPhone version of the Beep Beep Salem app, which is our local version of the Flowbird app that's used in many locations in the United States and internationally.
It was easy for me to establish an account and payment method because I was able to do this via my Apple account and Apple Pay. So I didn't have to provide any personal information aside from my car's license plate number.
The parking spaces aren't visible yet because paid parking doesn't start until July 10. I did scroll through the parking tips and found this screen decidedly confusing. My hope is that things will be clearer once I'm actually able to try out the app when I park for my Thursday Tai Chi class.
The reviews of the Flowbird app on the Apple App Store are quite positive with a 4.2 rating (out of 5). But the TrustPilot reviews are horrible, a 1.2 average. This is Google's AI Overview.
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Convenience:Flowbird allows users to pay for parking remotely, extend their parking sessions, and find available parking spaces, saving time and potentially avoiding parking fines.
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Security:The app incorporates security features like secure payment methods and multi-factor authentication.
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Accessibility:It can be used on mobile devices and computers, and GPS is used to automatically identify the user's location.
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Payment Issues:Several users have reported problems with payment processing, including being charged multiple times without a session starting, and saved payment methods not working.
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Location Detection:Some users have experienced issues with the app not accurately detecting their location, leading to difficulty finding parking locations.
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Account Setup & Checkout:Users have found the account setup process cumbersome and the checkout process lengthy, with some encountering errors with saved payment methods.
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User Interface:Some users have criticized the app's user interface and design, including issues with adding payment methods.
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