By James Langton
Drivers in Fuengirola and Málaga city can now pay only for the exact amount of time they use a blue-zone parking spot, saving them money and making the municipalities the first in Andalucía to introduce the change.
The new feature is only available for drivers who use the Telpark smartphone application to pay for parking, which can be downloaded for free from the App Store for Apple devices and the Play Store for Android smart-phones. By linking a bank card to the app, users can pay for blue-zone parking through their phone.
Parking attendants simply scan the licence plate to check that the vehicle’s driver is registered and has an active Telpark session, cutting out the need for drivers to go and get a paper ticket from a machine and display in on their dashboard.
The app’s basic payment service has been available in more than 40 Spanish towns and cities including Fuengirola and Málaga. But at a press conference last week, Fuengirola’s mayor Ana Mula announced that the town was the second in the whole of Spain behind Guadalajara to introduce Telpark’s new Start and Stop feature, and added that “paying only for the time we use is really a breakthrough.” Málaga followed days later, launching the system on Tuesday of this week.
