Imagine this: You’re in San Francisco and you drive to the Mission, ready for a giant, juicy burrito. The first step is to find parking.
After driving a few blocks, you see an open space. Uh, oh, driveway! A few minutes later, you get your hopes up – another empty space. Fire hydrant! You finally find an open spot and park. As you walk to the taqueria, you see a sign: “Residential Permit Parking.” San Francisco and New York City residents don’t have to imagine; this is an everyday scenario.
An estimated 1/3 of traffic congestion in cities is caused by cars circling looking for street parking. Traffic-data firm INRIX estimates that searching for parking costs the UK £23.3 Billion a year. That is a lot of wasted time and a lot of unnecessary tailpipe emissions!
Imagine this alternative scenario: you put in the amount of time you need to park. The map shown on CarPlay shows you the areas that have the highest likelihood of parking spaces for that duration. The calculation would take into account the current time, day of week, street cleaning rules, residential parking rules, commuter lanes, etc.
Extra credit for taking into account the size of the car. When I drove a Mini, I had a few bonus parking spaces that only small cars could fit in. On the other hand, someone who drives an F-150 has a lot fewer options.
This is doable: much of the data already exists and in digital form. Many cities use GIS tools like those from ESRI to track this information. Here’s a map from San Francisco, which has some of the most complicated restrictions in the United States. The database is captured at the individual parking meter level. Six o’clock and the loading zone is now available to everyone? Show it on the car’s display.
Google’s Street View vehicles capture images of all of these obstacles.
If I park my car and go to my hotel room in a hurry, I use Street View to check parking rules. The parking restrictions are legible.
The dashboard can also warn about traps: In San Francisco, the only holidays for meters are New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Even on Independence Day, you’re not free from parking tickets.
You can go even deeper: many cities have switched to parking apps to allow people to pay for meters. The status of the spot or zone could be added to the map. (This is not definitive because a car may have left the space or someone might have paid in another way.) See my related post on adding real-time information to maps.
Google and Apple can’t create parking spaces, but they can make it much easier for you to find them. In the process, they can help improve the air in cities. That’s a big win that could also be helpful from a public policy point-of-view.
redesign | mobile 