

Now, to Find a Parking Spot, Drivers Look on Their Phones - kunle
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/technology/08parking.html?_r=1&hp

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bm98
If I am the only person who has access to the app, it will get _me_ off the
street and into a spot faster.

If _everyone_ has access to the app, then nothing will change.

Think about it. How quickly are open spots snatched up in downtown San
Francisco at peak hours right now? There's not much room for improvement
there.

The problem is simply that there is more demand than supply of on-street
parking, and people are willing to wait 30+ minutes to "win" a spot.

A much more effective solution is to just raise the price of on-street
parking.

Philadelphia did this in 2009 [1]. I don't know if they've done any studies to
evaluate the impact, but my own personal observation was that it opened up
just enough spots during peak hours to eliminate the need to "cruise" for
parking almost entirely.

[1] [http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Phila-Meter-
Parkin...](http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Phila-Meter-Parking-
Rates-to-Rise.html)

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jasoncrawford
Unfortunately the app is unstable and hogs an enormous amount of memory. If
you can get it to run without crashing your phone, it gives alerts about
memory warnings and "switching to lightweight view", and then doesn't actually
show street-level parking data. At least, that's my experience. Hopefully
they'll fix it in future versions coming soon.

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MichaelGG
I know it's not the same as urban street parking, but in a mall I just saw in
Guatemala City, each parking space has a sensor. This lets them display
realtime information on which areas in the parking lots/garages have free
spaces. Each space has a red or green light, so as you drive through you can
instantly spot an open space. Pretty neat.

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dhughes
In my province using a phone while driving gets you a $300 fine plus three
demerit points (out of 12).

