Connect the Dots
The Problem
Last week I moved to Denver.
I used to live in a big city -Buenos Aires sees +14 million people every day. Big cities mean traffic; and traffic brings parking limitations with them.
Denver is no stranger to these 2 problems. And now that I am a proud truck owner, I’m left with having to face them both as well. Traffic is not that big of a deal as I plan on taking the RTD as much as I can, but parking -specially free parking, coveted by students around my new place a block away from DU -is proving to be a hard task to accomplish.
With this in mind, I came up with the idea of bringing a solution that would help people find parking spots as close as their destinations as possible, with free parking being the main driver behind the search.
The Solution
What’s available:
2. Parking.com
I found these solutions through Google and they are good approaches at solving the parking problem, but fall short either in parking proximity to destination or a free parking option. Mainly they find garages and metered parking; they weren’t intended for those of us who don’t mind leaving our cars on the side of the street and have no problem in walking a block or two to save a buck.
New Concept
The API of my proposed solution would work similarly in that it would rely on Google Maps to display a map to easily and quickly visualize the location and its surroundings to find the most suitable street parking spot. It would also work with a series of filters for the user to be able to filter out options depending on cost and distance among others.
I’ve been playing with Google’s tutorial on Maps JavaScript API. It starts from the very basic and even lets you try it out on JSFiddle. I have yet to try coding it from scratch as I don’t have an API Key from Google. But on the tutorial page I was able to see how to add markers, import, visualize and combine data, and even add a transit and traffic layer; which could potentially help predict actual availability of parking spots around your destination.
