Peterborough has a new mobile parking app, available for use starting Friday.

Motorists can now download the HotSpot Parking app and pay via smartphone for parking, both downtown and on campus at Trent University.

"This has been a great idea from the very beginning," said Coun. Dean Pappas, whose ward includes the downtown, at the launch of the app at City Hall on Thursday.

HotSpot CEO and founder Phillip Curley was at the launch and explained how the system works.

First, you download the app on your phone. (It's not free, by the way: the membership fee is $2 monthly, or $20 for a year.)

To sign up for the service, motorists fill in some information (licence plate numbers, for instance, and an email address so you can have parking receipts emailed to you).

Next you load a balance onto your phone, which you can pay via credit card.

When you park, you will find a sticker on the nearest parking meter or pay machine indicating a numeric code for your parking spot, which you type into your phone.

Then you decide how much time you want debited from your balance and pay your fee.

When your time's about to expire, you will receive a notification (and you can extend your time, remotely).

Stickers bearing the numeric codes for parking spots downtown were to be applied to meters and pay-and-display machines on Thursday evening (both downtown and at Trent).

Service will be available at municipally owned parking spots and street parking downtown (not in parking garages).

Meanwhile motorists are getting two hours of free parking downtown starting Friday until Dec. 25. HotSpot Parking and the city of Peterborough are co-sponsoring the free holiday parking this year.

But what if you want to continue paying for parking using small change?

Kevin Jones, the city's transportation manager, said meters and pay-and-display machines will still be operating as usual. The proceeds will then be donated to Kawartha Food Share.

Jones also said parking-enforcement officers will have no trouble determining whether you've paid by phone: officers take a photo of your licence plate, which gets checked automatically against the HotSpot database.

You'll only get a ticket if the officer sees you haven't paid by phone and you have no parking stub from a pay-and-display on your dash.

The city had considered installing credit card readers in the city's pay-and-display machines, Jones said, but it would have cost $400,000.

Coun. Don Vassiliadis, the city's transportation chairman, said that was too expensive, given that parking fees are $1.25 an hour: it would have taken far too long to recover that cost.

HotSpot Parking is a Fredericton, N.B.-based company, and Curley said they do business across Canada's east coast and are expanding into Ontario and Quebec.

Terry Guiel, the executive director of the Downtown BIA, said at Thursday's launch he's interested in seeing whether downtown businesses would want a HotSpot parking-validation program.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

The HotSpot website shows how it works: customers can hold up their phones to a small in-store scanner to allow the merchant to chip in parking fees.