Parking 2.0

Grush Hour is where Bern Grush, Founder and CTO of Skymeter, blogs about parking, traffic, and the technological/economic solutions to related problems. Welcome Bern, its nice to have another voice blogging about these important topics. As always, you can find Bern’s blog, and others related to parking, in the Parking Blogs section of my Parking 2.0 blog (on the right).

The Economist presents the best overview I’ve seen yet of the future of wirelessly connected devices in A world of connections.

“New wireless technologies will link not just people but lots of objects too. That will be tremendously useful… but getting there will be tricky”

It looks like the introductory article is available at the link above, but for the whole thing you’ll need to be a subscriber, or you can purchase the magazine on the newsstand.

A new report of the US Department of Transportation entitled Advanced Parking Management Systems: A Cross-Cutting Study is available online in web and PDF format. I’ve just skimmed the report so far, and while I’ve noticed a number of inaccuracies, missing vendors, and missing projects, it still seems like a useful overview.

Normally I’ll keep this blog to discussion of parking in general, but I can’t resist letting you know that Spark Parking has been featured in an article on the Discovery Channel website entitled Find Parking With Your Cell Phone. Now, back to our regularly scheduled blogging…

The CarHarbor Blog has a post (the first in many months) detailing why CarHarbor will not be opening for business. Interestingly, the same issues that CarHarbor identified with a distributed parking marketplace may also affect other startups in the space, like SpotScout. Though CarHarbor dosen’t mention SpotScout by name, its clear that the “Execution, not Hype” comment is about them. Its actually somewhat amazing - have you ever seen a startup get so much press, so far in advance of actually offering its service, as SpotScout has?! Anyway, thanks CarHarbor, for raising awareness among the public in using innovative technological and marketplace approaches to solve a pain so many of us share. We’ll miss ye, and we hardly knew ye!

I’m a big fan of the latest parking innovation at airports - small, free parking lots, near the terminal, that are for short-term use by people in their cars coming to pick-up friends and relatives. The rules for these lots typically include a 1/2 - 1 hour maximum stay, and a requirement that the driver remain with the car. When the traveller arrives and gets their bags, they call their “driver” to come pick them up. These lots will eventually significantly reduce the number of cars “circling” the terminal, causing traffic congestion and burning fuel.

Now I read that the Orlando International Airport Offers Wi-Fi For Drivers waiting in the “park and call” lot. Presumably the drivers will use this wireless internet service with their laptops to keep themselves informed (of flight arrival times) and entertained (YouTube?) while they wait. Brilliant! As long as the airport adequately promotes this amenity through new signs, I’m sure the park and call lot at OIA will be very popular.