There are several options to pay to park in downtown Bend, from paying at the numerous kiosks to paying through various mobile apps. But which app you have to use depends on which zone you’re parking in.
“There are three apps that are available for users to choose from when it comes to parking in the City of Bend. The idea behind that was really to give the users options when it comes to apps and give them options to pay for their parking,” City of Bend Community Relations Manager Jacob Larsen said.
While options are nice, some say it makes the simple process of parking unnecessarily confusing.
“It seems like having one platform would probably be a more straight forward approach, especially for visitors so we don’t get confused,” Dallen Russell, who’s visiting from Washington D.C., said.
There are several apps you can use to pay for parking in downtown Bend, but not all of them allow you to pay for all of the zones.
For instance, the Pango app allows you to pay for most places downtown, like the Centennial Garage. But it wont allow you to to pay for parking in the Brooks Street Promenade. This forces users to download a separate app entirely, called Parking Passport.
“I feel like it’s in there best interest if they want to make people pay for parking to make it as easy as possible to pay, right?,” Russel said. “Even if I lived here I fell like navigating between two depending on where I’m parking would be frustrating to say the least.”
The city says it plans to evaluate if this is an efficient method to parking management and welcomes any feedback the community might have. You can provide input on the parking method here.
