Whenever I head out to the city, parking is always a concern, as well as cost of parking. When I look up information in Google Maps in my city, the amount of parking data is fairly limited, whilst I know that in almost every building, there may be public chargeable parking.
I’d like to invite everyone to share what if your idea or practices you follow when creating/mapping parking places in Google Maps. How to then also indicate the cost of parking in Maps. Opening hours. I guess, the objective is wherever I am, I would like to use Google Maps to find the easiest, cheapest parking near me whenever I need to park. I have an intention to go map all the available parking in my city so Maps will be even more useful to all road users.
Share your experiences and also what you find lacking so we can learn from each other.
*I would love to one day just use Google Assistant and say, “I need parking” and it directs me to the cheapest option nearby… So to do that, I need to put all the relevant data in Maps… the question is how best to do it, hence this post…
#mapparking
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@StephenAbraham I like the idea but here in San Francisco and throughout the Bay Area, paying rates changes depending what time you enter a lot, even parking meters depending on the street changes, to special events can double the cost if not more. Most of our parking lots won’t post costs on their websites. I do notice that lots don’t always get added to maps. I as any I find and use that isn’t on maps but usually try to use public transportation to get to events.
@Twister411 Yes, same situation in my city, not enough parking data. I would love to one day just use Google Assistant and say, “I need parking” and it directs me to the cheapest option nearby… So to do that, I need to put all the relevant data in Maps… the question is how best to do it, hence this post…
I would like to add for space available in parking or not. As when I visit parking after search online and getting parking fully occupied with vehicles, Then i have to wait to park or again search for another parking nearby. Thank you for such idea @StephenAbraham Ji
Hi Steve,
While I have not marked parking space myself, how to do that infact ? I know a parking lot of 20 cars, how to demarkate the same since we add places by dropping a pin. Is that fair enough to drop a pin and just say parking lot ?
Many parking lots in Kerala are rude enough to say this space is reserved only for this business though the space is govt space/the shop is having no business then too. How too get rid of that case.
How do you track the availability of space ?
Does this have an entry and exit boards ?
@almithra my opinions about what we want to do initially is to at least have where public car parks can be found, the exact location, opening hours… and possibly the parking rates (probably need to be via a photo). It will just be another searchable location in Maps.
We can think of it as like a restaurant or a hotel. We do not know how many tables there are in the restaurant, or rooms in the hotel, or if they have space at that very moment. Just need to know where the location is, and possibly a phone number and opening hours, so we can find it and navigate to it. So, there could be a possibility it could be full at that moment, just like if we visited a restaurant without calling and they could be full at one moment.
Capturing and making that information in Maps could be a start, so at least car owners can find location of public car parks. 2 wheelers generally can use the same parking information because I think in most cases, public car parks will probably have space for 2 wheelers as well. At the moment, at least in my city, even this basic information is quite lacking, so, trying to learn from others who have done mapping for car parks before to see if there are good recommended practices we can follow. 
Keeping information about pricing and availability of parking spaces in real time is probably something which is impossible for local guides to achieve. That sounds more like the way the public transportation info is being treated in the Google Maps transit layer: via a direct cooperation between the companies and Google. So, the ideal scenario would be that Google incorporates parking facilities into the transit layer (although that would mean less options for local guides - but we could still help pointing out to our local parking lots that they should then sing up).
It’s a great idea, I think we can add public parking lots and payed parking lots as places . It will be good if we are able to add some information about the parking space associated with the business in their review. And think about Google maps giving live parking availability info in future, like the live traffic feature!
