New App Aims to Auction Off Street Parking

• May 12, 2014

by Lark Turner

A new parking app is taking the race for a parking space to a new level by affording consumers the opportunity to pay for the chance to park in public, street spots. That’s right: MonkeyParking, currently available only in San Francisco, lets drivers auction off their parking spots as they’re leaving them to other drivers in need.

The app could hypothetically lead to professional parkers moving from spot to spot to make money off auctioning them, but the site’s rates probably aren’t high enough to support an income — it’s advertising paying $150/month to parkers who use the service to sell their spots.

MonkeyParking is being called the app that symbolizes “why everyone hates Silicon Valley.” San Francisco obviously has a supply-and-demand parking problem, but is monetizing space that’s meant to be up-for-grabs to the public the right way to solve the problem? Here at UrbanTurf, where we’ve frequently covered the parking problems endemic to certain highly trafficked neighborhoods, we wonder whether this app would be heralded or protested here in DC.

From the company’s angel investor site:

Imagine you’re in your car, rushing to be at an important meeting downtown. Parking garages are full and finding on-street parking can take a long time. Have you ever thought about paying a driver to leave his parking spot to you? MonkeyParking is the first app that lets you do it!

Simply open the app, check the availability of parking spots published by MonkeyParkers and set your price for their spot. Once your price has been accepted by a MonkeyParker you will get directions to his spot, he will wait for you to arrive and he will leave the spot for you.

You can be a MonkeyParker yourself: publish your parking spot on MonkeyParking every time that you park your car and get notified about drivers willing to pay for the spot. Accept the price and leave your spot to the driver within 10 minutes. It’s a smart way to make some extra $ when you’re about to leave your spot anyway.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/monkeyparking_takes_competition_for_metered_spaces_to_the_next_level/8476