GRAND RAPIDS, MI - At the moment, more than 1,300 spaces in city parking ramps and lots downtown are available for visitors. But the Gallery on Fulton ramp at the corner of Fulton Street and Commerce Avenue is all booked up.

Meanwhile, more than 600 spaces are available in the Government Center and DeVos Place ramps about a half-mile walk to the north.

The numbers come from a new GR Park app that the city is promoting in advance of a rate hike that takes effect Thursday, Sept. 1. The mobile app enables users to see how many spaces are available in city parking facilities, which can be categorized by distance away, space availability and facility name.

As of 3:22 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 30, the Monroe Center ramp has 181 of 189 visitor spaces available, for example, while the Weston Commerce ramp has 21 out of 72 visitor spaces available. Each of those ramps have more parking spaces than that, but the GR Park app takes spaces reserved for monthly parking customers out of the calculation and only shows what's available for daily visitors.

Collectively, ramps and lots north of Fulton have more than 1,100 visitor spaces available while ramps and lots south of Fulton have about 150 spaces available.

The city is raising rates in part to push parking customers into existing ramps and lots with surplus capacity. Rates are rising the most south of Fulton, with prices doubling south of Van Andel Arena in the Area 4, Area 5, Area 6A and Market Street lots, and going up nearly 50 percent in the Area 2 and Area 3 lots.

Rates in the DASH lots north of Fulton - Area 7, Area 8 and Area 9 - are going up 60 to 80 percent in order to make the cost higher than the price of a 31-day Rapid bus pass, but increases in most other lots north of Fulton are much smaller. Ramp rates are increasing by smaller amounts, with no change at the Pearl Ionia and Government Center ramps north of Fulton.

In conjunction with Thursday's rate hike, the city is increasing the frequency of Downtown Area Shuttle (DASH) service and subsidizing free Silver Line bus rides north of Wealthy Street.

"The DASH lots (west of U.S. 131 and lots north of I-196) are going to be more convenient because of the new DASH service," said Josh Naramore, the city's Mobile GR manager.

The myStop mobile app tracks Rapid buses, including DASH routes, to give riders a sense of when buses will arrive at a given stop.