The IT Nerd

In Toronto, the city has it’s own parking lots that offer citizens affordable and safe parking. The problem is that a lot of these lots require either spare change or the use of your credit card to park as they are not manned by parking attendants. That could make paying for parking a problem. But the Toronto Parking Authority who runs the GreenP parking lots has a solution for you. They have an app that will allow you to find parking and pay for it easily. It’s available for iOS and Android and I will be reviewing the former.

First you set up your online account which includes choosing a 4 digit security pin, entering your credit card, as well as entering the license plate number of your vehicle, you’re ready to go. The first thing that the app will do is to help you find parking using your the GPS hardware in your phone:

From this screen, you can choose the lot that is closest to you. Once you pick the lot, you get to this screen:

You can choose the location and get directions. Once you arrive at the location and you arrive and park, you can pay for parking:

You can save multiple vehicles which is handy if you have more than one car, or in my case I’m driving press vehicles from car manufacturers. It’s also handy that you can add a vehicle on the fly. Once you choose the vehicle, you get to this screen:

You can choose the amount of time that you need to park for. From there, you can pay for parking. The app will e-mail a receipt when your stay expires and you will get prompts on your smartphone when your parking is about to expire. You can also add additional time if needed from the app.

The app is simple to use and works very well. Not every parking lot in Toronto is compatible with this app and that includes on street parking, but that’s the only downside. But once it rolls out to those lots, I think Toronto residents will find it extremely useful. If they can make it work with on street parking, that would be amazing. Assuming that you park at lots that are unmanned and are comparable with the GreenP app, Toronto residents will find parking to be easy and painless.

UPDATE: Not so fast. I ran into a major problem with this app that I have documented here.

This entry was posted on April 4, 2015 at 7:03 am and is filed under Products with tags GreenP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.