Sidewalk Labs Launches Pebble, a Sensor That Uses Real-Time Data To Manage City Parking (techcrunch.com) 57
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet's urban innovation organization, has announced the launch of Pebble, a vehicle sensor that's designed to help manage parking in cities by providing real-time parking and curb availability data. Here's how it works: Small spherical sensors are stuck to the ground on parking spaces to note the absence or presence of a vehicle. Then solar-powered gateway hardware, which can be strapped easily to street poles, uses IoT to connect the sensor to the cloud through the cellular network. The data is then viewed and analyzed by real estate developers, parking operators or municipal agencies via a dashboard. Pebble doesn't use cameras or collect identifying information about a person or vehicle, and is touting a "privacy preserving" approach.
Between 9% and 56% of traffic, and all the pollution that comes with it, is caused by people who are cruising for parking. Pebble says its real-time parking availability can be integrated into navigation apps, like Google Maps, through an API to help users spend less time circling the block. "Real-time parking information can also alert would-be drivers when spaces are limited before they even leave home, leading them to use alternative travel modes, such as park-and-ride transit or ferries," wrote Sidewalk Labs' senior creative technologist, Nick Jonas, in a blog post announcing the launch. "For example, a smart parking program at a BART park-and-ride station reduced driving by a monthly average of nearly 10 miles per person -- and even shortened commutes."
Between 9% and 56% of traffic, and all the pollution that comes with it, is caused by people who are cruising for parking. Pebble says its real-time parking availability can be integrated into navigation apps, like Google Maps, through an API to help users spend less time circling the block. "Real-time parking information can also alert would-be drivers when spaces are limited before they even leave home, leading them to use alternative travel modes, such as park-and-ride transit or ferries," wrote Sidewalk Labs' senior creative technologist, Nick Jonas, in a blog post announcing the launch. "For example, a smart parking program at a BART park-and-ride station reduced driving by a monthly average of nearly 10 miles per person -- and even shortened commutes."
How much longer will finding parking matter? (Score:2)
When self driving cars are the norm, the car can let you out at your destination and then go park somewhere a bit remote where parking is easily found.
Although this is a kind of cool idea, I'm not sure the problem will remain long enough for this to roll out on any scale. Though perhaps self driving cars could tap in on this data to go somewhere to park, more likely they would just go to a parking garage somewhere.
Re:How much longer will finding parking matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
When self driving cars are the norm
Yeah, but you're talking twenty years from now.
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When self driving cars are the norm
Yeah, but you're talking twenty years from now.
They'll be here any minute now [slashdot.org]
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Anyone wanna bet on which will get here first, commercial fusion power or real-world self-driving vehicles? I mean, they're both just 20 years away, but fusion has a huge head start in that it's been just 20 years away for over 50 years now!
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I wonder if I would trust my car to find a place to park. There are certainly places in San Francisco which I will not want my car to park (civic center, helo).
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I think there was some sort of a public parking app in SF maybe 12 or 13 years ago. I don't remember the details, maybe it relied on people announcing they were leaving the spot and allowing people to bid? In any event it seemed similarity antisocial and very manual.
This doesn't seem likely to be useful to individual parkers, since there are usually enough circling cars to snap up whatever appears.
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I wonder if I would trust my car to find a place to park.
That's why I think when we get to where self driving cars park, it will probably be in sets of garages designed to help them out - better designated / wider spots, more sensors to identify exact car positioning, perhaps charging at every spot. You could build and locate a parking structure like that in a safe place outside of downtown and request your car when you were getting ready to leave.
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Just get out and tell the car to circle the block for half an hour. Save those parking fees.
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Pretty soon municipalities are going to have to grapple with the fact that their pricing of on street parking incentivizes turning blocks into slowly moving carparks for self-driving cars.
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municipalities are going to have to grapple with the fact
Why? Centrally planned governments have always found denial to be a viable response to most issues. What has changed?
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I expect self-driving cars to be much more like self-driving Ubers. It will be much faster to get the nearest self-driving car than to get "yours" which had to go some distance away to park. And the roads won't be clogged by cars driving to/from their parking locations.
In rural areas where parking is not a problem there would be personally-owned vehicles, and probably Ubers that you can ask to wait (for a price) for you to use them next time. This is because in such areas the personal vehicle is probably cl
Sensors (Score:2)
https://www.sidewalklabs.com/insights/introducing-pebble-a-low-cost-way-to-manage-parking-and-curbs
Once in place, Pebble sensors relay the presence (or absence) of a vehicle in real time. That’s all Pebble collects: whether or not a vehicle is there. The system uses no cameras or other ways to identify a person or vehicle.
So what happens when something (litter) covers the sensor or someone places a box over it (prank), will the Pebble register the parking spot as unavailable?
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It likely uses magnetics to sense when there is a large piece of metal directly above it (so the litter isn't an issue). Similar loops of wire are used in the pavement in front of some traffic signals to detect the presence of a car (and the need to give it a green light).
This technology seems to be a way to do the same but in a smaller package and without the need to physically connect it to the traffic light controller.
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>"It likely uses magnetics to sense when there is a large piece of metal directly above it"
Might not work with a motorcycle. Or an exotic car with not enough ferrous metal, especially if backed in... Still sounds like a neat idea, if they are not vandalized.
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Prank? With most IoT security as thick as an eggshell, it won't take but a week before people are reserving their own spots. Wait for the fights (in Florida, gunfights) over mismanaged/hacked spaces.
And parking charges.. (Score:2)
Dont forget how easy this will make it for monitoring of parking charges and identification of people parking too long.
Perhaps cities should reverse their modern trend of removing as much street parking as they can find an excuse for (apparently to make cities greener) - since it is contributing so much to pollution??
Just a thought.
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Dirt, snow, oil stains, heavy friction, rain, all these will cause errors. Parking too long? What of it? Should someone use an app like Parkmobile/etc., it might be paid for. Who audits it, litigates it, and does such a sensor hold up in court? None of this is known.
How many sensors must die before they get replaced? What liability is there for sending someone to a supposedly empty space, just to find it's occupied and there's an error?
And what happens when the sensors get covered so that locals can thwart
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Perhaps the cities should remove as much street parking as possible in heavy traffic areas and replace it with parking lots and garages, instead. That would keep all the cars cruising for a parking space out of the way of regular traffic. And if you still really want sensors for parking availability, garages
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I suspect that the sensors are inductive. Like a big metal detector. Litter, a box (other than a large steel one), snow, etc. will not affect it.
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What about big metal sledge hammers?
Redundant words (Score:2)
uses IoT to connect the sensor to the cloud through the cellular network.
"IoT" and "cloud" here can be omitted without any loss of meaning.
Pebble? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't Pebble a smartwatch? It didn't even fail that long ago.
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Leave it to Silicon Valley to abuse not only everyday words, but to even re-use everyday words that are already used by other tech companies.
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This idea isn't new either, it's been in use in Europe for decades. My own city has installed something similar, occupancy sensors in the ground with solar power, networked back to HQ. Hubs installed on lamp posts. My equipment tells me it runs on 868MHz.
They have signs showing where spaces are available as you drive into the city.
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Wasn't Pebble a smartwatch? It didn't even fail that long ago.
FTFY. Pebble hasn't existed for a while.
In other words ... (Score:2)
Small spherical sensors are stuck to the ground on parking spaces to note the absence or presence of a vehicle. ... Pebble doesn't use cameras or collect identifying information about a person or vehicle, and is touting a "privacy preserving" approach.
We couldn't figure out how to snarf that information from underneath the vehicle.
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They did figure it out and just didn't tell you. Like that length of time the street map cars were gathering wifi information without telling anyone. Nothing a quick smack with a hammer won't solve.
Imagine Cool Hand Luke, but smashing sensors instead of cutting off parking meters.
9-56% (Score:2)
>"Between 9% and 56% of traffic,"
With what, an error rate of maybe 44%? So it could be between 0% and 100% of traffic?
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No, it's different rates in different neighborhoods of different cities. Park Slope in Brooklyn comes in at the high end. I would imagine that a sprawlier city would be a lot lower.
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No, it's different rates in different neighborhoods of different cities. Park Slope in Brooklyn comes in at the high end. I would imagine that a sprawlier city would be a lot lower.
* at different times, too
Fantastic! (Score:2)
A bit of duct-tape and you have your parking space in front of your house for life.
Wil not solve the problem (Score:3)
The major problem is this:
1) During the 20th century government decided to create a car culture. Most public transportation was denigrated and a massive building boom created both highways and suburbs.
2) This worked fine given the population. But it doubled. We could have created a Public Transportation culture by growing up. Instead we kept the same car culture. Space was limited so we went further out.
3) This caused major traffic problems, which can not be fixed by increasing road size (as the space near the center is super-valuable and super-expensive to turn into more highways). But that is another issue, I am talking traffic
4) This made the city at the center super-valuable. We build that up a bit, but barely enough to fit the work. Nowhere near enough to fit parking the cars. And it is now too expensive to build parking lots because of the value of the land.
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The proper solution is a combination of more high rise condos and good public transportation. Middle class (and even some wealthy) people in NYC take the LIRR and subways because it is worth it. So Public Transportation can solve the problem. But the reputation of Public Transportation is still bad so people do not fix it.
And people continue to treat suburbs as good for kids. Bull. Suburbs generally require a parent (usually a mother) to drive her kids everywhere. If you are driving your kids everywhere then that is saying IT IS NOT SAFE ENOUGH FOR YOUR KIDS TO BE ALONE.
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The proper solution is a combination of more high rise condos and good public transportation.
One might argue that in a pandemic the idea of high rises and public transport are a horrible idea. And if you believe that the odds of future pandemics are increasing, due to things like climate change, the horrible-ness of this idea increases.
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No need. Just build more 4-story residential buildings. The density is still like 10x as much as single-family homes.
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That means more than a lack of public transport. See below.
Maybe it means the nearest bus-stop is 4km away. Which is likely because new suburbs are designed to block through-traffic. Since the bus can't go anywhere else, it doesn't service that suburb. And being the suburbs, the only chain-store available will be McDonalds. In addition, there's likely only one recreation area (excluding a cycling/jogging path) which is only big enough for a swing and monkey bars.
The other residents who don't own a ve
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There's only one thing missing from your fix to the problem: City planning that emphasise the self-containment of an area. All of your suggestions are great, but it would be even better if it were not necessary to travel. The concept of the "Central Business District" is one of the most damaging parts of the urban sprawl. If life's requirements (work, education, shelter and entertainment) were all accessible locally there'd be no reason to build a 10 lane wide highway to get an entire city's worth of people
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The problem with the historical "car culture" narrative is that it doesn't tell the whole story.
For one, it doesn't acknowledge what a game changer motor vehicles were for freedom of movement. Prior to the motor vehicle, getting around even a city was challenging. Public transport existed in major cities, but even there wasn't very good or extensive. Keeping a horse in a city was fantastically expensive. In more rural areas, the horse was easier to keep but the speed and distance were issues. Motor veh
Sounds like a good way... (Score:2)
On the ground? (Score:5, Insightful)
> ...are stuck to the ground on parking spaces...
Obviously designed by people who have never visited an area with snow and snowplows in winter. I can see it now, the snowplow's blade running down the street, ripping out pebbles as it runs across each parking space, pushing dozens of these into a snowbank. Then automated self-driving cars bumping into each other the next day, clamouring to grab the next available parking spot in the pile of snow at the end of the parking lot.
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Obviously designed by people who have never visited an area with snow and snowplows in winter.
So what? There are lots of cities that don't get snow but have parking problems, like Mountain View where this is being developed. Even in areas with snow it would probably work fine in parking garages.
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They seem to be marketing these as easy to install via an adhesive backing, which means easy to steal as well. Grab one, wrap it in tape so it thinks the space is constantly occupied, and you have your own personal reserved parking spot at the location of your choice.
We have a similar system in my city already and the sensors are recessed into the road. We rarely get snow but if we do they won't be damaged. Theft-wise they have hex bolts holding them in, probably enough to deter people.
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Obviously designed by people who have never visited an area with snow and snowplows in winter.
Or designed by people who are catering for most of the world that doesn't contend with snowplows, or those who let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
Google concerns ... (Score:2)
Nothing new (Score:1)
Each bay is numbered, you put the bay number into the machine, the presence of a vehicle is verified, you select the duration, and pay. The nice people at Parking Services get push notifications for bays that are due to expire but the vehicle is still there.
Here's a link to a news story from a couple of years ago https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/116222348/sensors-sans-sense-almost-5000-wellington-parking-tickets [stuff.co.nz]
Why would any municipal government (Score:2)
Fatal flaw in this idea (Score:2)
Then solar-powered gateway hardware, which can be strapped easily to street poles, uses IoT to connect the sensor to the cloud
Solar doesn't work because of clouds, I've been told.
Yay, enhanced ticketing (Score:2)