The mobile parking industry has been soaring to new heights, thanks to applications like Best Parking Finder and Park Mobile U.S.A. Now, new applications are surpassing those trailblazers by identifying parking spots that are open, rather than just stating where parking exists. To support such efforts, Streetline, Inc. and Parker have teamed up to release the ParkerData Availability application programming interface (API). This real-time API allows application developers and Streetline customers to incorporate parking availability into other applications, websites, or navigation systems to find parking with ease.
Opening Streetline’s real-time data set will accelerate the development ecosystem and allow for more parking integration into various apps. The ParkerData Availability API allows developers to build their own parking ideas on mobile and web apps and in-car navigation. Such solutions factor in parking-spot availability count and the total capacity for the facility. The ParkerData Availability API displays can search for spaces by row or type, such as accessible or visitor spaces.
The new program is a RESTful (representational state transfer) service that is delivered in either XML or JSON format. When combined with Streetline’s proprietary machine learning algorithms, the 225 million sensor-based parking events analyzed by the interface engine enable the delivery of accurate and timely parking-space information. This is accomplished across different parking topologies, such as parallel, perpendicular, and diagonal spaces. Additionally, the interface engine provides a low-, medium-, and high-availability index value to act as a space count alternative.
The ParkerData Availability API has been released to private beta customers and will be available on a fee basis in the future. The new ParkerData Availability API follows ParkerData Basic API, which allows access to over 20,000 off-street parking facilities. Currently, 40 locations in the U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, Spain, and France exist. Some goals of ParkerData Availability API include reducing traffic congestion, decreasing emissions, improving driving experience, and enhancing the downtown community.