Downtown parking finder and reservation system

[larrymason]

There are examples of some really good parking apps in other cities. Low hanging fruit would be an app that identifies the free and paid lots, with a bit of transactional databasing these parking lot could have real-time or near real-time capacity indicators so users have a good sense of which lots to drive to.

The more useful and harder application could identify empty space for on street parking and even include a reservation system within a short temporal window. But the hard nuts to crack are developing, specifying and building meter heads or some sort of sensors that could be glued to the pavement. There are RFID sensors, but they don't transmit that far... making a meter head could be expensive. So there are some real engineering challenges here but worth trying to do.

The incentive for the city would be capture true real-time demand pricing. The city could be making money from this app. Unfortunately the mayor will show resistance until hard a business plan, or proforma that shows the ROI, is presented. But we should be talking about this application as it would make us famous.

[skylenewman]

Would an MVP be better than http://www.hsvcity.com/Parking/?