BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — Residents and visitors in the city of Bowling Green will once again have to pay for parking come January 2020.
When that happens, BG will also provide another payment option.
The city will be installing new parking kiosks, similar to the ones installed in 2016, but they now have a mobile app to pay through the phone.
The mobile app is called Park Smarter. It's currently available for download and residents seem to be optimistic about it.
"I think that would be much easier, you wouldn't have to fish around for coins to feed the meter, so that'd probably be a bit better," said Nadine Taylor.
The city has made these changes in hopes to make paying for parking smoother after hearing from both residents and visitors that they would like multiple ways to pay.
"People expressed the desire of extending their time in the downtown without having to go back to the parking meters. So we started looking at it through that lens of 'how do we make parking easier to pay for and then how can people extend their time remotely," said Bowling Green's Assistant Municipal Administrator, Joe Fawcett.
The app has the ability to see the open spaces around town, see how much time is left on the car and other things. People will still have the option to pay with card or coins at the kiosk as well.
The city also wants to stress that there will still be 157 free on-street parking spaces throughout the downtown area.