Here’s a Tip to Make Parking Garage Payment Changes in Maine, Easier

If you live in New England, especially in or when visiting the bigger cities, you're definitely no stranger to parking garages.

Whether it's heading down to Boston for a concert or game, enjoying a day on the Seacoast in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, spending time along the waterfront in Portland, or maybe even just for your job -- you can basically call us parking garage pros.

But in an effort to make things as easy as possible (and keep the traffic flow in the garage as smooth as possible,) parking garages seem to always be adapting, usually as new technology becomes available.

And recently, some Maine parking garages have made upgrades that have changed the game a little for either one-use customers or monthly pass customers.

One of the highlights of these upgrades? Exiting becomes quicker with the option to actually pay for your parking on your cell phone.

But along with that new technology comes a different execution for customers that park in a garage daily for work, which has them set up on a monthly payment plan. A great feature for a lot of these garages with a monthly parking pass is the ability to tie your parking pass into your E-ZPass transponder.

Drive right up to the gate and watch the arm go up as your transponder is read and you're identified as a monthly pass holder.

However, with some parking garages Maine upgrading their technology, the monthly parking pass execution has changed a bit. Now, monthly pass holders have to stop at the gate arm (like they would normally) and touch the option indicating they're a monthly account holder.

From there, they're given a phone number to call and then a specific digit (0 through 9) to type in on their phone's keypad, which will then cause their E-Z Pass transponder to be read at the gate arm will lift, giving them entrance.

Not a massive deal, but in a very first-world problem, it can eat up a minute or two of your day. And that's why this tip will help cut that time back down to within five seconds.

After a couple of uses, you'll notice that the phone number you have to call is always the same, as is the 0-9 digit that you enter to get into the garage as well as the 0-9 digit you enter to exit the garage. And that's exactly the key to making what could take up to a couple minutes, only take a couple of seconds.

Whether you're entering or exiting the garage, as you're approaching the gate arm, bring up the recent calls in your phone and call the number back as you're pulling up to the arm.

Once the automated message tells you to enter the number shown on the screen, since it's always the same number, just hit that correct number without even having to hit the screen and BOOM. In or out of the garage in seconds.

It's not brain surgery, but it'll save you annoyance at the start or end of your day.