I’ve just seen on CNN that San Francisco is the beneficiary of the world’s first app that will actually find you a parking space. Well, that’s not quite true; what the app does is take information from sensors in parking spaces and sends it to your phone, which then tells you where the empty parking spaces are.

Now, this seems to be a pretty good idea and should put an end to driving around aimlessly while getting your kids to shout out when they see a space, which so often turns out to be either restricted, disabled, just that little bit too small or – the worst of all – hiding a smart car. You know; where you don’t the see little car until you actually start to drive into the space. How frustrating is that?

A problem I see with this app is that it encourages the use of your phone while driving. I mean how many old grannies crossing the road are going to have to be run over by drivers looking for spaces on their phones, before people see this may not be such a good idea?

However, my main bugbear with this technology is that San Francisco City officials are saying it will help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as cars will no longer have to drive around for hours on end hunting for spaces. Agreed, this is probably true. But if lowering greenhouse gas emissions is the goal, shouldn’t they instead be trying to persuade people to leave their cars at home?

I know that one reason I avoid driving into my home city is because parking is a nightmare (and because I’m an angel with a green halo around my head, obviously). If parking in San Francisco becomes easier and you can pretty much drive direct to the spaces, will this not encourage more people to take their cars into town instead of walking, cycling or getting on the bus?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not so stuck up that I oppose this technology outright; I actually think it’s a pretty good idea; but please don’t try and sell it to us as being green.

GR

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