How to Save Time Hunting for a Parking Spot, South Korea Edition

Our recent podcast “Parking Is Hell” explored the high costs of free parking. Transportation scholar Donald Shoup described one study, from L.A.:

We made 240 observations. When you add it up, the average time it took to space was only three minutes, that’s two and a half times around the block, which doesn’t seem like very much. It’s about half a mile hunting for parking. But when you add up all the people who are parking in Westwood Village, if they had the same average that we had, that adds up to 3,600 vehicle miles of travel a day. That’s the distance across the U.S., and that’s just in the 15-block area of Westwood. If you add it up for a year, that’s equal to 36 trips around the Earth or four trips to the moon hunting for underpriced curb parking in a little 15-block area.

In South Korea, an oil company has started a campaign to reduce parking search time. The HERE campaign states that South Korean drivers wander 500 meters everyday for parking spots; by cleverly installing a balloon that indicates exactly where open spots are, it reduces search time for drivers. The balloon dips down when a car is parked, and floats back up when the spot is free. The video is worth watching:

http://youtu.be/nw9g9OVHdJI

(HT: Dan Gibson)