Will Smart Parking Make Circling The Block A Thing Of The Past?
from the wouldn't-that-be-nice dept
There was a fascinating article in the NY Times this past weekend about how the city of San Francisco is embracing "smart parking" technology -- basically installing special sensors on the ground in 6,000 of its 24,000 metered parking spots. The idea is that the sensors will report (from one to the next and then onto a central computing system) where there are actually spots available -- and people will be able to discover where to go via electronic street signs indicating open spots or even via their mobile phones. It should make for an interesting experiment at the least. Beyond the hassle of just finding an open spot, the article notes that in some places a significant component of street traffic can be attributed to people just trying to find a parking space. Of course, if there's still too many people looking for spots, it's unlikely that these sensors will alert people in enough time. By the time they find the open spot, they're likely to find someone else already beat them to it. Still, this does seem like a step in the right direction in terms of using information to better deal with at least some traffic congestion problems.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: parking, san francisco, smart dust, smart parking
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Of course, nothing will stop the lousy parker from taking up two spaces!!!
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Re:
Why not if they have the sensor and can tell that one person is taking up more than one spot for ten min send a request for a cop to issue a ticket. This would work also for expired parking meters.
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http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008113.html, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/article?f=/c/a/2008/04/14/MNTO104818.DTL
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Info Flow => Instabilities
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This would allow them to go directly to cars that have been parked too long rather than trying to monitor when a car arrives in a spot
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but good job on who ever came up with that, ill try to follow up its progress.
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Good idea but...
it is a great idea, if you think about it, that puts us another step closer to making automobiles automatic, and that i believe will be the day that accidents are a thing of the past.
they should take the idea that they have there, and put research into that. everybody knows that automation like that is not just a science fiction theater special... it can be done would not be hard at all
Great idea though again, keep up the good work!!
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Notify by phone....O great
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We already have this
It is a heavy traffic area; but, it isn't as bad as a city street for parking.
The mall is Easton Town Centre in Columbus, OH.
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Then of course you'll have the parking garages paying the city to advertise on the same network, displaying their open slots et cetera. Very Mercenary, but I can see it working.
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Can't wait til the hacks begin...
Since these experiments usually work out to be so secure...
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reply
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