Walk through Brisbane's CBD in late March and you'll see something the city hasn't had in a decade: a genuine choice in how to pay for parking. A second app is coming, and while that might sound like a minor convenience to city dwellers, it marks a turning point in how Brisbane manages a service that once seemed permanent.
For ten years, CellOPark held a monopoly on Brisbane's mobile parking payments. Now PayStay, which already operates at university car parks across Queensland and New South Wales, is launching citywide next month. It's the kind of infrastructure move that typically goes unnoticed until someone tries to park and finds the system they know doesn't work.
The numbers tell the real story. Pay-by-app now accounts for more than half of the city's 4.5 million annual parking transactions, a dramatic shift from ten years ago when the app barely existed. Already, 2,600 of Brisbane's 9,126 paid spaces are app-only. The old parking meter, once as ubiquitous as a postbox, is becoming an anachronism.
From a fiscal standpoint, this makes sense. Parking meters cost about $1.7 million a year to maintain. That money could be redirected to roads, footpaths, or anything else a growing city needs. The infrastructure is expensive, frequently broken, and increasingly unnecessary when most people carry a smartphone that can do the job.
But here's where good intentions meet awkward reality. Research released in late 2024 examined Brisbane's five-year transition and found something councils don't always discuss openly: not everyone adapts at the same pace. Age positively influences the likelihood of choosing parking meters, while frequent parkers favour apps; authorities must approach the transition cautiously, as rushing to eliminate meters may exclude those less comfortable with digital technology.
City folk might not realise, but digital exclusion isn't just abstract. A pensioner without a smartphone, a tradie with a cracked screen who prefers physical payment, a visitor from overseas unfamiliar with the app ecosystem—these aren't edge cases. They're real people parking in Brisbane every day. The research suggests they're more likely to get stung by fines or forced to hunt down one of the remaining meter spots.
According to Brisbane's Infrastructure Committee, pay-by-app parking means motorists only pay for the minutes they use, rather than overfeeding meters. That's a genuine saving. But it assumes you have access to the technology and feel confident using it.
The council hasn't eliminated meters entirely. Tap-and-go card readers are available at electronic meters, providing an alternative for those who don't want an app. That's something. Yet the trajectory is clear: as more spaces become app-only, the squeeze on non-digital users will tighten.
Competition between PayStay and CellOPark should improve service quality and potentially lower fees through market pressure. That's sound policy. But it only helps those actually using the system. The harder question—how to serve the remaining population that can't or won't go fully digital—sits in the too-hard basket for most councils.
Brisbane is doing what most growing cities do: optimising infrastructure for the present while hoping the transition problems solve themselves. The maths work. The future works. It's just the people in the middle who need a bit more attention.