It is one of the banes of living in Nice: driving around in circles, blood pressure mounting, hunting in vain for that elusive parking space. Well relief is in sight: starting in June, the city will begin installing Smart Parking, a system to locate parking spaces with your smartphone GPS! Beginning with 1,000 places in the area behind Nice Etoile, wireless capters will notify the existence of an empty spot with a blinking blue dot, within 15 seconds of it being liberated.
The free app also has the capacity to pay from your smartphone, even from afar, which will completely eliminate the need to rush out to ‘plug the meter’.
Within 2 years, all of Nice’s 10,000 street parking spots should be covered… and with 1/4 of Nice’s horrendous traffic attributed to drivers trolling for parking, the less time circling means less traffic for the rest of us.
Nice-Matin: Trouver ou se garer grace au GPS
Thanks! That kind of makes up for all those parking spaces that will be eliminated when the garage near the bus station is torn down.
Not to mention the down side of ‘smart parking’: the ‘meter maids’ will have an easier time targeting the cars whose meter has expired…