Parker

Inspiration

Parker was inspired by the challenge of finding parking in Madison, where complex regulations make it difficult for drivers to locate available spots. We designed Parker to make parking more accessible, providing real-time navigation to the best available parking sports; helping drivers save time and reduce stress.

What it does

Parker transforms urban parking frustrations into a seamless experience. Using smart navigation, real-time updates, and intuitive search, we empower drivers to find the best available parking spots based on location, restrictions, and time limits. It also filters spots by street restriction types while navigating to nearby parking efficiently, reducing unnecessary congestion.

How we built it

We built Parker using React Native + Expo for a seamless cross-platform mobile experience.By leveraging react-native-maps and the Mapbox API, we dynamically render GeoJSON data and real-time location updates. Our filter system toggles parking restrictions, while Expo’s Location module centers the map on the user’s position for seamless navigation. We used data sets from City of Madison Open Data to integrate official street parking restriction layers (https://geodata.wisc.edu/catalog/CityOfMadison-b7e3ac9a3ce2451a9fddd38c34dfdeb34) and GeoJSON Processing to filter, visualize, and dynamically color-code parking zones. We used ChatGPT to overcome the learning curve, allowing us to quickly grasp new technologies and bring our vision to life. Our system intelligently processes and overlays parking restrictions from city data sources, ensuring users get up-to-date information on where they can park right now.

Challenges we ran into

Challenges we encountered included integrating multiple GeoJSON layers while keeping performance smooth on mobile. We switched from Google Maps to Mapbox for better iOS and Android compatibility and rendered thousands of parking restriction lines without sacrificing clarity. Implementing real-time filtering based on parking rules to accurately reflect spot availability posed another layer of complexity. Additionally, we tackled debugging issues with Expo and React Native Maps, ensuring seamless display of map layers and user location.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Accomplishments we're proud of include seamlessly integrating the City of Madison’s parking data into a user-friendly mobile interface, implementing dynamic filtering based on parking restrictions, and creating an interactive map that highlights and color-codes each restriction type. We also overcame API and rendering challenges to deliver a smooth, real-time experience for users.

What we learned

JSON data processing and how to visualize it in React Native Maps.
Mapbox integration for real-time navigation and multi-layer mapping.
Optimizing mobile performance when handling large datasets.
Filtering spatial data dynamically based on parking time limits and city rules.
Handling user preferences & history in a lightweight mobile app.

What's next for Parker

Our next step would be to expand to more cities by integrating additional municipal parking datasets. Also implement Smart Alerts to notify users of upcoming street sweeping, ticketing risk, and expiring parking sessions. We'd also like to integrate Live Availability Data to work with city APIs to detect real-time open parking spots. Additionally, we would let users report available spots & parking conditions to crowdsource data while also adding a enhanced filter by adding a custom user-defined parking rules for special needs (e.g., EV charging, disabled parking). Lastly, we want to explore Predictive Parking by using historical data to forecast the best times to park in different locations.