July 2015

One of the biggest headaches of driving in the city – finding a parking space – may soon become easier.

Inrix, a Washington-based technology company, has developed apps that can detect open parking spaces in downtown garages, surface lots, and metered street spaces, then alert drivers via systems on-board navigation. Inrix is ​​partnering with select cities in North America to better understand traffic patterns and says it is working with select automakers to deploy the technology in cars and trucks across the country.

“It’s a big plus for the driver,” said Jim Bak, director at Inrix. “In the next two years, it will be a fairly standardized offering on vehicles.”

Inrix parking apps, shown at a telematics conference last month in Novi, use high-tech sensors in smart meters along selected city streets to show drivers a red-yellow-green heat map on their GPS. Green means parking is available; red means look away. If the counters are broken or lack the technology, an algorithm predicts with up to 80% accuracy where points should be opened.

Already available in Seattle, Vancouver, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Cologne and Copenhagen, Inrix says the service will expand to cover 23 cities by the end of the year. Detroit isn’t one of the cities Inrix has worked with, in part because of its outdated and frequently broken parking meters and the fact that, despite recent advances in downtown and Midtown, it’s still not as difficult to find a parking space compared to many other cities.

The new on-street parking feature joins an off-street Inrix app launched in 2013; it finds prices and availability for over 80,000 car parks and garages in 31 countries.

Inrix claims to have worked with Audi, BMW and Lexus, although none of the three brands has contributed anything to the US market. Ford Motor Co. explores the use of parking space tracking in 25 mobility experiences around the world.

There are benefits for drivers looking for stress-free downtown driving experiences, and for cities trying to better understand traffic patterns and make the most of available spaces.

“Anyone who drives a car knows how complicated parking is,” said Dave McCreadie, manager of electric vehicle infrastructure and smart grids at Ford. “Someone who can streamline this is going to reap the business benefits of providing their customers with convenience and value. The connected car is going to open up so many possibilities and services.”

“We can reshape mobility”

Industry experts say the need for smart parking apps is great.

Inrix cites studies that estimate that up to 30% of traffic in congested urban areas where on-street parking is in high demand results from drivers looking for a parking space. They say drivers often spend close to 20 minutes looking for good spots.

Frost & Sullivan, a Texas-based research firm, found in a recent study that drivers waste an average of 55 hours a year looking for a parking spot. He estimates the cost to consumers and local economies at nearly $600 million in lost time and fuel.

These numbers are likely to increase. In its Sustainability Report released last month, Ford predicts that two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities by 2030, and a growing middle class will increase the number of cars circulating in urban areas.

And in a recent Ford-commissioned study of drivers aged 34 and under, the automaker found that 57% were concerned about finding a parking space, and a majority of drivers were interested in technology to solve problems. aspects of driving such as parallel parking.

“We think this technology is absolutely essential,” McCreadie said. “It’s an inflection point where we can reshape mobility.”

Detroit’s low-tech system

The Inrix technology gets its data from a number of sources, including sensors on meters and in the roadway, as well as payment information from car parks and parking lots. The cities they partnered with installed much of the infrastructure and shared the data.

“Cities are as interested in this information as drivers are,” Bak said.

But it would be a challenge for a city like Detroit to use the parking data needed with low-tech infrastructure and often-broken meters. Last year, it was reported that about half of Detroit’s 3,196 on-street meters were malfunctioning.

Instead of relying on Detroit or other cities to install expensive meters in sensors or parking garages, Ford’s technology would allow cities to access vehicle data directly, through sensors already installed and used for hands-free parking assistance and blind spot detection. .

McCreadie said the Dearborn automaker has been experimenting with parking for about a year and plans to eventually market it, but there are no plans to market it yet. “Technology is here to transform what used to be a pretty outdated space,” he said.

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