In large cities like San Francisco, Hong Kong and Amsterdam, finding a parking spot near your destination is a mission impossible. Often there is simply no parking spot available and when there is, it is mostly an expensive parking garage where you pay 10$ per hour. MonkeyParking is an app that responds to the need of finding a parking spot nearby. It enables people who are about to leave their parking spot to sell their spot to drivers via an auction system; the highest bidder gets the spot.
The idea of the app arose from the annoyance of the founders of finding a vacant parking spot in San Francisco. “Sometimes it happens that you end up circling around one block for hours but one block away someone is just about to leave” (Paolo Dobrowolny, 2014). MonkeyParking brings inside information about whether someone will leave a parking space into the open. By making this tacit knowledge explicit, MonkeyParking makes the process of finding a parking spot more efficient and consequently allows drivers to save time.
In the second place, the app of MonkeyParking can solve one of the major problems large cities are facing these days; air pollution (Rainwater, B., 2015). Because drivers can now drive directly to a vacant parking spot, drivers do not have to circle around for hours. Nowadays, over one third of all traffic in cities, is looking for a parking spot (IBM, 2011) and 50 to 90 per cent of air pollution in cities is caused by it(Smith, M., 2016). Imagine what for effect MonkeyParking can have on the air quality in large cities when they gain ground.
Unfortunately the app is shot down on July 11th 2014. According the city Attorney of San Fransisco, Dennis Herrera the app creates a predatory private market for parking spaces and causes traffic accidents because people are too busy with the auction in the app. Moreover, Dennis Herrera called on the American Law that it is not legal to sell something you do not own. But is MonkeyParking selling parking spots, or are they selling only information about parking spots? There is no law in America that says that you can’t sell information.
What do you think? Is MonkeyParking the solution of the future or is it a Monkey business?
Sources:
http://www.monkeyparking.co/
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235575
http://www.techinsider.io/cities-are-facing-these-10-big-issues-2015-8
http://pollutionfreecities.blogspot.nl/2011/10/searching-for-parking-spot-and-needless.html
https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/10/apesht/