Crowdsourced traffic information and navigation application company Waze has formed a new partnership with one of North America’s leading off-street parking reservation service providers, SpotHero, with the intention of cutting travel times, minimizing driver distraction, and alleviating traffic congestion.
Newly published research by Parkopedia reveals that more than half (54%) of motorists wish their navigation system would automatically guide them to parking near their destination. SpotHero and Waze are answering the call by linking their navigation and parking into a unified user experience. Made possible by the Waze Transport SDK (software development kit), drivers can now book parking on SpotHero and then ‘Navigate with Waze’ directly to their parking facility. Upon arrival, a single tap on the Waze map pulls up the SpotHero parking pass to access the garage, making switching back and forth between apps seamless and keeping driver’s attention on the road.
Motorists looking for an available parking spot helps create an enormous amount of urban traffic congestion a surprising rate: according to Inrix, in the top 10 USA cities the average time spent searching for an empty parking space is nine minutes per trip, and can produce an extra 1.6 vehicle miles of travel per trip. Using SpotHero’s portfolio of mobile apps and websites, drivers find, book and access a parking facility near their destination, eliminating the need to drive around searching for a vacant space. SpotHero users can now take advantage of navigation and real-time traffic information from the world’s largest community of individuals, agencies and city authorities that contribute data to the Wave platform.
“We are on a mission to eliminate traffic,” said Adam Fried, global partnerships lead at Waze. “By expanding our partnership with SpotHero, we can effectively move cars off the road and reduce congestion. With this initial integration, we’re joining navigation and parking into one user experience to make driving safer, easier, and more efficient.”
SpotHero’s SVP of strategy and operations, Elan Mosbacher, added, “Waze and SpotHero share a mission to eliminate congestion. By working together, we will get more cars off the roads faster and reduce the friction of switching between our parking and navigation apps.”
