The Pango parking app was fully functioning in Scranton as of Friday afternoon, putting an end to underequipped meter-enforcement staff issuing bad tickets and frustrating Pango parkers.
Pango Chief Executive Dani Shavit trained parking enforcement staff at Scranton City Hall on Friday afternoon. The company provided the remaining parking enforcement staff with iPad Minis that show whether a parker paid via Pango.
"Pango users can park now with no worries," he said.
For the better part of a week, however, early adopters of the app were receiving tickets - often multiple violations - because not all meter enforcers had the iPad tablets required to monitor the program. So they wrote citations for cars with expired coin-fueled meters.
Pango delivered the electronic tablets Friday.
"If the team got the equipment they needed, then that's great," said John Rogers of the Standard Parking regional office in Philadelphia, which oversees meter enforcement in the city. He said he did not know many tickets were written improperly to users of Pango.
But Mr. Shavit said tickets issued to those who paid through Pango will be voided. Those who were wrongly written tickets must show proof of payment at City Hall.
The app caught on in Scranton faster than expected, Mr. Shavit said. More than 350 people downloaded the app as of Friday afternoon, he said.
Scranton became the third U.S. city with Pango parking; the others are Latrobe, Pa., and Auburn, N.Y. About 45 other cities around the globe have Pango.
"Scranton is at the beginning of the revolution," Mr. Shavit said. "It is important that we are here to help."
Contact the writer: dfalchek@timesshamrock.com