Australia-based Spot Parking is eyeing Dallas-Fort Worth to set up operations to connect drivers with parking spots, as it has in cities across the land Down Under.

Spot Parking U.S. General Manager Mark Frumar attended the Parking Industry Expo July 19th at the Gaylord Texan, where he met with Dallas Innovates to discuss the company’s strategy for entering the U.S. parking market.

Spot Parking works like this: The company creates a digital twin of parking spaces in cities, universities, and other partners it works with, and helps direct consumers to available spots.

Spot Parking U.S. General Manager Mark Frumar [Photo: Spot Parking]

Spot Parking hires and trains contract workers with cell phones equipped with proprietary software to create geospatially specific digital records of parking spaces. For a fee rate of  roughly $20,000 per 50 city blocks, Spot Parking will digitize areas so they can be mapped for parking availability.

Spot Parking also works with parking space providers, such as ParkMobile (which operates in Dallas) and parking garage owners, which relay parking availability data to Spot Parking.

Drivers can then use that information to find open spots nearest to their destinations.

Since Spot Parking launched in 2016, according to Frumar, it’s been adopted by Sydney and other cities across Australia. In the U.S., Spot Parking is working with CampusParc that operate The Ohio State University’s parking system, especially to help manage the convergence of gameday traffic. His company also is in talks with officials in Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins.

Spot Parking Finder screenshot

In Texas, Frumar said, he’s contacting institutions within the University of Texas system to help those campuses manage their parking.

“Spot Parking can do everything a university transportation director can do,” Frumar said, adding that he’s working with roughly ten parking management vendors that work with U.S. institutions of higher education.

Spot Parking is also looking at areas of innovation—such as Dallas’ Deep Ellum neighborhood—to include as one of its service areas.

Frumar said so far in the U.S., universities have been more eager to work with Spot Parking than municipalities, because universities have more parking management resources. The eagerness from cities is beginning to pick up now though as COVID has dramatically increased the demand on the curb from e-commerce, food delivery and urban freight.

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