How the app that replaces the parking meters in the city of Buenos Aires works

As difficult as finding a parking space in the city of Buenos Aires was finding a business that sold the famous empty spaces for parking meters or automatic ticket machines. However, a new paid parking system went into effect this week via an app. All you need to know about Blinkays.

To start working, once downloaded, you will need to create a user via an email address, configure a password, verify the account and choose a payment method.

Once you have obtained a parking space, with the GPS activated on the digital map, you will need to indicate with your finger the place where the vehicle will be.

Within the digital cartography, the areas enabled are highlighted in blue. If you leave your car outside of this strip, the application will not accept the payment and will ask you to find a new enabled seat.

Blinkay accepts credit, debit and Mercado Pago cards. As for the payment options, there are two: prepaid and postpaid. With the first, the driver chooses the number of parking hours and pays the total in advance.

With the postpaid mode, parking is also started with the charge of the hours. But in this case you have the option to “stop” the session at any time and pay only for the time you have used. This option will initially only be available for payments by credit card charged to the app.

To avoid the dreaded tags, the app sends an alert when there are five minutes left to complete the deadline. And the driver will have the option to add fractions of 1, or 5 minutes, depending on the payment option chosen.

Those motorists who do not have a mobile phone or a virtual means of payment, or who prefer to continue paying in cash, will be able to use the shops that will be identified with a sticker and, on the Buenos Aires City Government website, there will be a map indicating where they are.

The application that offers the paid parking service is not a local development, but works in several cities around the world, including Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Mexico City, Toronto, Ottawa and arrived in Argentina via an international tender.

The new metering system has already started operating in the current fare zone, which includes 3,500 seats in parts of the San Telmo, Montserrat, Balvanera, San Nicolás, Retiro and Recoleta districts. There are no plans to add new locations.

Control mechanisms

The system change brings another novelty. From now on, the paid parking fee will be collected directly by the Buenos Aires government and not by the transport companies.

And the time you have to pay will be from 8 to 20 from Monday to Friday (now it is from 8 to 21), and from 8 to 13 on Saturdays.

The control mechanism will also change. Because, with the application, there will no longer be any physical proof to indicate to transit personnel that the stay has been accepted, as is currently the case.

This system will be replaced by the alternative of scanning the license plate to confirm the validity of the car park with a control center.