Inspiration
According to a UCLA study, up to 30% of drivers on the road in a city's central business district drivers are looking for a parking spot at any point in time. On average a driver spends just under 3.5 minutes looking for this spot, on average traveling a half-mile during their search. Over a one year timeframe, this search in the area around UCLA added up to "950,000 miles of travel, along with 47,000 gallons of wasted gas and 730 tons of greenhouse gas emissions." source By providing a smart and data driven solution to speed up parking of cars we are able to reduce congestion, save money, and keep the roads safe by reducing distracted driving which presents a hazard to other motorists/commuters and pedestrians.
Frustrated with the exact issues described above, we have sought out for a solution to this problem for Detroiters and commuters around the country. Our goal is to roll out a functioning app focused on Detroit and the surrounding Metro area, then expand to the Central and West side of Michigan and eventually to other municipalities in the Midwest/nationwide.
What it does
Parqs.me will provide real time parking availability in parking lots, at metered spaces, and in parking garages to commuters in cities around the country. When fully functional, the platform will analyze data from lots, structures, and parking meter systems to show current availability in near-real time. Also, we are working to use predictive functionality to help predict parking demand in real time. Later developments of the platform will also allow you to pay for your parking on the app and renew or extend parking as required. A long-term goal would to be integration with GPS systems to include the most efficient route to your desired end-point with parking availability in mind.
How we built it
The app was built fully in appery.io; Liam was the developer who built the entire app while Chris came up with the original idea.
Challenges we ran into
Getting access to the data. We currently have not started to source the data, but are in the process of talking with the parties who have the data and linking that with our application. Additionally, learning the programing. Liam was and is a novice coder, only having learned coding in the few weeks leading up to starting this project in early Mid.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Simply building the app. Our team is comprised of two brothers, Chris and Liam. Chris is a full time attorney with a passion for entrepreneurship and he approached his brother Liam, who has been learning to code for only 3 weeks, about building the app.
What we learned
The need to plan; unfortunately we came onto this competition late in the game (discovered the competition in January) and only started building the platform in mid January. Although this idea has been mulling around in Chris' head for a year or so, it only started to take shape in the past few weeks and it requires we spend more time to really refine the platform to be public-ready.
What's next for Parqs.me
Getting access to the data to push out a functioning app to begin testing in real-world environments; partnering with municipalities and parking service providers to collaborate on development and roll out a functioning product; additionally developing android or web-based app that gives us nearly full coverage in the mobile space.
More information can be found on our website.
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