Getting Ready to Take Part in the Solution

Do you live in one of the big cities? Congratulations! You are one of the 4.4 billion people who spend up to 107 hours per year searching for a parking space. You may yet be OK with setting aside about 4 and a half of your days per year just for finding a parking spot, but it won’t end there. The urban population will more than double its size by 2050. With the current provisions of public transportation around the world, the question that comes to mind is if the population’s growth rate will be followed by the number of 1.5 billion cars in the globe. If so, the next logical question is whether we really want our days to be 5-10 hours shorter outside our cars.

Cars stay parked more than 96 percent of the time, and regulating street parking or building more parking lots do not help with congestion. The scientific literature on parking explains that increasing parking norms only cause an over-supply of parking by monopolies, thereby affecting living costs,construction costs, land-use, but not the time spent looking for a parking spot, nor the rate of traffic accidents, gas consumption, carbon emission, nor any other parking related problems in city centers. Along with smart city planning and public transportation, we need to seriously think about how to optimize for all of us the use of spaces available for parking our cars without overburdening drivers with regulations.

A Grassroots Solution to Parking Problems: Let's Parky