Navigation provider TomTom has announced the introduction of an On-Street Parking service, a game-changer for drivers on the hunt for that hard to find parking spot.
The service works by using GPS data to determine where drivers are looking for parking places and at what times of the day – and when and where they are successful (ie the car comes to a stop at the side of the road). With this information, the TomTom On-Street Parking service provides drivers with the probability of finding a parking spot on a street level, as well as the average search-time for a spot. To further enhance the parking experience, TomTom will also publish pricing and restriction information where available.
The service will be initially available as a data feed for 25 cities in Europe – Brussels, Copenhagen, Marseille, Paris, Berlin, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart, Milan, Rome, Turin, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Oslo, Moscow, Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Gothenburg, Stockholm, Birmingham and London – with additional geo-expansion to follow.
The TomTom On-Street Parking will complement the existing Off-Street Parking (parking garage) information service already available to TomTom customers and licensing customers.
The new On-Street Parking service represents another step for TomTom towards the future of driving, where the service could be used by autonomous vehicles to seamlessly find a parking spot and park themselves.
“TomTom On-Street Parking offers drivers peace of mind and a less stressful parking experience, in addition to helping them save time and money,” says Ralf-Peter Schäfer, Head of Traffic and Travel Information at TomTom. “The service also helps reduce congestion in cities and thus lower CO2 emissions, and enables cities to better understand and manage street parking inventory to improve urban mobility”.
