Seattle is building a digital parking system to better manage competing demands for curbside space among cars, delivery trucks, pedestrians and more.
Why it matters: Home of delivery giant Amazon, Seattle is in the vanguard of cities that are digitizing their parking rules — in part to crack down on the glut of delivery vehicles that double-park and don’t pay for the spaces they occupy.
The project is part of an emerging field called “curb management,” in which cities try to juggle the ever-expanding demands on public streets and sidewalks.
“We want to show that we can manage our curb space for the public good,” said Brian Hamlin, the Seattle Department of Transportation’s strategic adviser for curbside management.
Driving the news: Seattle hired Populus to map all of its public curb space and parking rules, building an API that can be tapped by commercial vehicle fleets (like Uber) or online map systems (like Google Maps).
