New Gated System by Flash Parking in Downtown Garages

The public parking garage at 842 Palm Street is returning to a gated entry/exit system and customers will once again pay for their parking session when they exit. 

The new system is part of the City’s Parking Technology Roadmap adopted by Council and developed in collaboration with the community to improve the parking experience downtown.  The system, made by Flash Parking, is focused on the user experience. It is a return to the pay upon exit model with multiple payment options including:

• Walk-up Payment Kiosks – Credit/Debit/Bills, No Coin 
• Pay at the Gate – Credit/Debit only 
• Contactless Payment – Phone & Digital Wallets 

There is no need to pre-pay for parking with the new system. Monthly permitted parkers can choose between multiple options to access and exit the garage that can be used interchangeably 

The new system is designed as a “free flow system” to reduce wait times when exiting. At the end of your visit, if payment is made using the walk-up payment kiosks or via one of the contactless payment methods, the system will read your vehicle license plate and open the gate without a need to stop at the gate.

Flash Parking is a cloud-based system which means updates are made behind the scenes without lengthy downtimes. Additionally, it can work in offline mode, where all functionality flips over to local transaction processing between the devices in the garage if there is a power outage or connection issue.  

The garage at 842 Palm Street is the first of the downtown garages slated to implement the Flash Parking system. During this initial roll out, City staff is welcoming feedback from visitors so that refinements can be made prior to implementing the system in the other two existing garages later this year. Please submit feedback to parkinginfo@slocity.org.

Once it is installed  in all the garages additional functionality like validations and reservations will be made available.

In response to community needs, the City of San Luis Obispo has been making significant improvements to the public parking programs in downtown San Luis Obispo over the past year that will all make parking easier and more affordable. In May 2024, the City Council approved several changes to parking services that would offer customers the lowest possible prices and would better the parking user experience in a variety of ways. This includes technology improvements, using a consistent gated system and payment model for all parking garages.