Share

Your Pass to Skipping the Line

Tweet: Passport has your pass to skipping the line http://ctt.ec/JT5d_+ #mobilepay #parking

We hate lines. More specifically, waiting in lines. We’ve all been there. Sizing up the cashier at the grocery store. Identifying who is the fastest swiper. Assessing if a co-worker is helping bag items in their line. Counting food in the carts ahead of us. We bob and weave, searching for the shortest route out of there. We select our path, pursue it with passion, only to be greeted by a price check on aisle 3 and a pay-by-check customer.

Think back to your trips to an amusement park. Seeing the coasters blaze across the tracks. Screams of excitement coming from each loop and turn. Your heart beats with anticipation as you run up to your favorite ride, only to wait for hours at the most popular ones.

Since our youth, we have been in lines. At the doctor. At the cafeteria. At our jobs. It was also instilled in us that “skipping line” was unethical. People that were ahead of you in line deserved their spot. They were on time. They were first. You cannot “jump” in line. You must not bypass the process.

But what if line-jumping was accepted. In fact, what if we completely altered our idea of the line altogether?

Recently, I drove past a parking lot near Charlotte Uptown. It was in the morning and a line was forming. Not at a stop light or to get Cam Newton’s signature, but at the pay-for-parking machine. Early commuters, and likely soon-to-be-late-employees, were lined up to pay for their spot in the lot. This phenomenon is not unusual. Lines full of frustrated faces with an urgency to go places. But as I looked at the line I noticed something interesting.

They were all on their phones. They were probably checking Facebook, snapchatting their friends, posting a tweet, or sending the “I’m going to be a few minutes late,” text. All of them, in line and on their phones. I realized how inefficient this was. Every parker–waiting in line–using their phone for everything but paying for their parking spot.

There is a better way, of course. Passport builds apps that gives cities and parking operators the ability to allow their patrons to ethically line-jump. We do this with the very technology people use every day in a variety of ways–their phone. No more coins and credit card swipes. No more worrying about mad faces and snarky comments from the back of the line. No more worrying about being late. In fact, no more worrying about the line at all. Just park, pay, and be on your way. Other companies are picking up this trend, like Harris Teeter and Starbucks.

We’ve always wanted to jump the line. Maybe we should have been thinking how to eliminate the line altogether. At Passport, we’ve done just that.

Happy Jumping.