[zndr]

You're also looking at this the wrong way. Parking apps make the overhead of managing parking lots less expensive. IF you have higher adoption of the app you have less problems with your onsite machines/attendants/cash. Those cost way more money than adopting this across your fleet of lots. Also a lot of lot owners, have a mangement company or work with an app vendor who will add this as a simple way to improve their cash flow.

App vendors are only paid by the people who use the app, so they have every incentive to make it that much easier for some one to use the app than the ticketing machine.

The parking lots may be competing with other lots, but really they are most likely getting money either way, they want to decrease their overhead, hence apps.

[baddox]

But the parking lot can just require the app. That’s the point. They do not need to worry about adoption of the app because you need the app to use the parking lot.

[dwaite]

They can up until someone says they don't have a smartphone or their battery is dead.

The reality is that most parking lots do need to have fallbacks for these cases rather than telling people to drive off, and those fallbacks are often more expensive in terms of staffing/maintenance (which is why they added the app in the first place). Something where I point at a code on a sign, it pops up a payment button without me knowingly downloading anything will increase the cost savings beyond an app.