Easy-to-use touch screen kiosks with environmentally sustainable design
The City of Minneapolis has partnered with Flowbird North America, the leader in curbside management and urban mobility solutions, to replace the city’s ‘Pay-by-Space’ parking kiosks with 700 of Flowbird’s CWT touch screen smart kiosks. The upgrade offers customers a variety of payment options, improves the end-user experience, and is more environmentally sustainable.
The City’s current parking system covers about 8,400 parking spaces. These spaces were previously managed by single-space parking meters and Pay-by-Space kiosks. The kiosks were installed by Flowbird back in 2010 and successfully provided the city with the latest technology at the time. Now, the City has upgraded to Flowbird’s latest ‘contactless’ technology with the CWT parking kiosks. Users can now pay with their contactless credit or debit card, or digital wallet such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, allowing a swift ‘tap and go’ payment process at the kiosk.
The new Flowbird kiosks will continue to utilize a Pay-by-Space parking configuration, already familiar to motorists in Minneapolis. Users simply enter their parking space number, the duration of their stay, and make their payment. A new text receipt option will replace previous paper receipts and printers, limiting litter on the streets for an environmentally friendly approach.
All 700 kiosks are fully solar-powered, ADA compliant, and are equipped with a 9.7” full-color touch display that resembles the look and feel of a tablet. Built of stainless steel, the kiosks are vandal-proof and with-stand all weather climates.
The kiosks wirelessly communicate to Flowbird’s analytics platform, providing the City with the tools to analyze parking activity trends and streamline operations. This leads to high uptime and gives parkers a system it can trust. All paid space information is communicated in real-time with the City’s citation issuance system, provided by Gtechna to ensure good compliancy.
“We are extremely happy that we will continue our decade-long partnership with the City of Minneapolis using Flowbird’s latest technology,” said Benoit Reliquet, President of Flowbird North America. “We expect that parkers will be very pleased with the overall user experience provided through the large touch screens and advanced payment options.”
Flowbird worked together with City staff to install all 700 kiosks in just two months, completing the deployment at the end of December 2020.
Flowbird smart kiosks are used throughout the Minneapolis/St. Paul region for on-street parking, parking at city parks, and for off-board fare collection for METRO Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit system. Close to 1,000 Flowbird kiosks are installed throughout the Twin Cities.
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