Updated: 6:04 a.m. Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Published: 6:02 a.m. Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Finding a parking place in downtown Austin, given the hub's ever-growing popularity and city policies that have eliminated many on-street spots, seemingly gets worse by the month.
A free iPhone app getting something of an Austin relaunch today and an associated website for those without that type of phone could make the search easier.
The centerpiece of the program from ParkMe, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based company founded in 2009, is parking "heat maps" of Central Austin and hundreds of other U.S. cities. Using real-time information from the City of Austin's "smart" parking stations, ParkMe produces a color-coded map of downtown on-street parking availability.
Green, for someone looking to park, is good on that map. Yellow means that fewer spaces are available, and red means that cruising that block for parking would probably be a fruitless endeavor. Gray is the best color; it means that the meters aren't charging at that time.
ParkMe does not take the information down to a space-by-space level, nor does it allow a driver to buy parking online or reserve a space.
The information, as might be expected with parking, is fleeting. So the map updates every five minutes.
It does not have information for the state-run meters in the Capitol complex or for on-street parking without meters.
ParkMe has maps featuring parking garage locations and information for hundreds of cities. But company co-founder Sam Friedman said Tuesday that Austin is the first city to have the real-time street maps available. Friedman and Chief Operating Officer Alex Israel, also a co-founder, said Austin was chosen because of the real-time meter information available from the city (at no cost, Friedman said) and because of Austinites' generally high level of tech aptitude.
The Austin map, aside from the on-street color codes, shows dozens of downtown parking garages, as well as what it costs to use them, but does not indicate how many spaces are available in any given garage.
"There is no real-time yet for the garages, but we'll be adding that shortly," Friedman said.
By sliding a "length of stay" bar on the Web page, a potential parker can see how much each garage might cost for different times spent there.
Besides the app, available through the iPhone App Store, the information and maps are available at ParkMe.com [2] and on the City of Austin's website at austintexas.gov/parking [3] . Friedman said an app for Android phones should be available sometime in the third quarter of the year.
The company, naturally, advises that the phone app should be viewed only with the car at rest, an admonition some desperate drivers may be tempted to ignore.
"Eventually, we're going to do voice guidance," Friedman said. "You'll literally just say, ‘Park me,' and it will direct you."
The app, at least for now, will produce no income. But automobile navigation companies have paid for the company's database of parking information, Friedman said. And in time, the company intends to make it possible to reserve and pay for parking through the phone, a transaction that could carry a surcharge for the company.
"What Orbitz and Expedia did for the airline industry," Friedman said, "we want to do for parking."
Contact Ben Wear at 445-3698
Links
- ^ Ben Wear ('http)
- ^ ParkMe.com (ParkMe.com)
- ^ austintexas.gov/parking (austintexas.gov)
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