Saskatoon's '1-star' parking app to see improvements next week

Saskatoon's maligned new parking app should see three key improvements next week, director of community standards Matt Grazier says.

Parkedin will allow users to save credit card information without making a transaction, provide notifications that a user's time is expiring and allow users to extend their time through that notification.

"Those are all points that we heard quite a bit of feedback on and so you know, we're glad to see that those will be in place very shortly," Grazier said.

Shortly after that, he expects other "pain points" to be addressed.

"We hope within a good month or so that any user accustomed to WayToPark will have all the same features and functions available that they were used to."

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Precise ParkLink, the vendor that has provided parking pay stations and the WayToPark app since 2017, switched to Parkedin on July 1. Grazier said there is no contractually defined ability for the city to oppose a new app. The switch was related to changes with moving servers and server bandwidth, Grazier said.

The new app has come under fire for missing features offered by its predecessor, with Ward 4 Coun. Troy Davies saying it was "like every city councillor's nightmare."

On the Apple app store, Parkedin has an average rating of 1.2 stars. Users' reviews feature titles such as "Horrible," "Why does this exist" and "Parkedin should be parked till it improves." Android users are just negative, with reviewers calling it "absolutely awful" and "completely unusable."

The city's contract with Precise ParkLink runs until Jan. 1, 2026.