Haverford Township, PA

Background

Haverford Township is a suburb of West Philadelphia with a population of about 50,000 residents. The township, including the entirety of Havertown, houses a leading liberal arts college and historically has hosted several championship golf tournaments. Haverford offers residents and visitors approximately 425 paid parking spaces in addition to three off-street lots.

Until recently, parking payment was primarily done via on-street parking meters. In 2019, the township partnered with another digital parking system in an effort to modernize the parking experience which offered residents several new payment options, including kiosks and a mobile payment app. Unfortunately, the newly- implemented system often went out of service without warning.

To make matters more challenging, the kiosks were managed by a third party, resulting in the township ultimately having to pay for additional service when problems did arise. Customers were also not very happy, with residents and visitors frequently complaining that the mobile experience was not user friendly or intuitive.

“It just wasn’t a functioning system, and was ultimately costing us more money in the long term in the form of manpower and overtime,” recalls Craig Scott, a lieutenant in the Havertown Police Department who was put in charge of parking enforcement in 2021.

Transitioning to a Best-In-Class Parking Solution

It wasn’t long after Scott got involved with parking enforcement that he and others in the department realized they needed a change. After noting that many of the surrounding areas were already
using ParkMobile, he spoke with another administrator who highly recommended both ParkMobile’s app and service team. After speaking with ParkMobile representatives at a nearby parking authority conference, Scott and his team immediately recognized the benefit of an established partner with a wide network of existing users who were happy with ParkMobile’s parking offerings. “We knew we wanted to go with a bigger company,” Scott says about the decision process. “ParkMobile is very familiar to people in our area and is widely used down in Jersey Shore beaches, which a lot of our residents go to, so we figured it would be a smooth transition.”

After engaging with ParkMobile, the transition from the old system was achieved in less than 30 days. ParkMobile went live in Haverford in December 2022 and was rolled out across the township in January 2023. Scott remembers that even though the switch required a bit of extra work upfront, it was both quicker and easier than he expected. “ParkMobile was fabulous with the whole transition, I can’t see how they could do it any better unless they came and put the signs up themselves.”

Driving Better Customer Experiences and Smoother Operations

Since its rollout, the reception of ParkMobile among both residents and within the parking operations team has been extremely positive. While there were some initial growing pains for some customers getting used to a new system, ParkMobile’s user-friendly, best-in- class app is creating a smoother, easier transaction for residents without increasing backend complexity. “For everyone involved in parking enforcement in our department it’s just made everything easier. It’s also better for the consumer as well,” Scott says. The rollout has gone so well that the township decided to eliminate the kiosks altogether in their off-street lots in favor of app-only parking.

With parking operations running smoother than ever, Scott and the township of Haverford are thinking about the future. “I see us evolving with ParkMobile. I already have certain goals I’d like to achieve in terms of eventually phasing out parking meters,” Scott explains. However, he notes that like any big transition, it’s important not to move too fast. While adoption of ParkMobile continues to grow, the township will continue to offer multiple payment methods for residents who prefer to pay at the meter.

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