New Technology Could Help Find Parking Spots

Zia Yusuf is what you might call a smart parking expert, but when he talks about parking spaces, he sounds more like a realtor. That 12-foot by 5-foot piece of real estate in the city is very valuable real estate, he said. And you might say that Yusufs San Francisco-based company Streetline Networks is aiming to serve as a parking space broker, through the use of its networked wireless sensors. Our smart sensor technology allows us to detect the presence of a vehicle in a specific parking spot, said Yusuf.

And thats information which Yusuf said can be shared in a number of invaluable ways. We can give it to the city to understand how much parking is being used in a specific area, he said. We can transmit that information to a smartphone, that allows a consumer to go find an open parking spot. Yusuf said that major cities, including San Francisco, which is testing the technology, can also benefit from the sensors by using them for everything from dynamic pricing to parking enforcement.