I know I’m watching a fiction film when a character pulls up to their destination of choice and finds a stellar parking spot without any effort. Apparently, many others share my wish that this parking fantasy could be a reality as there are several tools out there from which drivers can choose to aid them in their parking spot quest;
*Parkopedia which has an impressive database of spaces and what is required to occupy them (tag? payment?, etc) which covers 20 countries,
*parkingspacenow.smgov.net offered by the city of Santa Monica which lists how many spots are available in the city’s parking structures
*And, Santa Monica based start up, Parking in Motion, LLC (PIM) which maintains a database of 20,000+ parking resources including parking lots and metered spaces. Information available about public parking lots includes their rates, hours of operation, entrance addresses, and space availability. Information about on-street meter parking includes p
osted restrictions and costs in the top 26 US markets — all in real time and at no cost to the app user.
As PIM’s CEO Sam Friedman puts it, “As an LA resident, I know that parking can be a pain — and after a year of research that my partner and I conducted, discovered that the parking angst is institutional: much of the infrastructure of parking is archaic and dysfunctional. We reasoned that people in other major urban communities share our frustrations so we decided to utilize today’s vast technologies to create a functioning parking tool that helps our fellow drivers. We think of it as our contribution to ending high blood pressure, road rage…”
For more information on PIM — which is available for iPhone, and iTouch and will soon be available for Android and Blackberry: www.parkinginmotion.com
For the app itself:
http://itunes.apple.com/pk/app/p-i-m/id417605484?mt=8
