Anyone who’s lived in a busy city knows parking follows its own unwritten rules. Locals don’t drive around blindly—they head straight for the spots that tend to free up, the streets that are easier to navigate, and the entrances that actually get you in. But could parking in a new place be just as easy?
Imagine arriving in a city you’ve never visited before. Your navigation system guides you perfectly through traffic, helping you avoid congestion and predicting your arrival time to the minute. The journey feels seamless and predictable, the way modern mobility increasingly does.
Then, as you approach your destination, something strange happens. The guidance that has helped you navigate the entire city suddenly stops completely. Your navigation system can take you to the address, but it doesn’t tell you where to park. So you do what drivers everywhere have done for decades: you start circling. One street, then another. Perhaps you enter a parking garage only to find it full. Minutes pass as you search for something that should be simple.
The strange part is that in many cases, the space you are looking for is available, and the data to guide you there already exists. Your car simply isn’t presenting this to you.
Anyone who lives in a busy city knows there is a different way to park. Locals rarely circle aimlessly. They know which garages usually have space, which streets tend to be easier, and which entrances actually work. They don’t guess. They have context.
This raises an interesting question: what if every driver could park like a local, even when they’ve never been there before?
Parking got easier to pay for, not easier to find
Over the past decade, the parking industry has made enormous progress in digitizing payments. Mobile apps have replaced coins, in-car payments are becoming common, and physical tickets are slowly disappearing. Paying for parking has never been easier. Yet when you ask drivers what frustrates them the most, the answer is rarely the payment itself. The real friction happens earlier, in those minutes when drivers are simply trying to find a space.
Research by urban planning expert Professor Donald Shoup suggests that drivers collectively travel millions of kilometres in large cities every year just searching for parking. Not commuting. Not delivering goods. Simply searching. The parking spaces are usually there, but the driver has no way of knowing where they are when they need to make a decision. It is one of the most fixable problems in urban mobility, and yet most cities are still getting it wrong.
Three moments that change everything
When we look more closely at the parking journey, it becomes clear that the most important decisions happen in a few key moments.
The first moment happens before the driver even leaves. Instead of navigating to an address and then looking for parking once they arrive, intelligent systems can review the parking pressure around the destination and suggest where parking is most likely to be available at the destination before leaving. Parking becomes part of the journey plan rather than a last-minute guess.
The second moment occurs in the final kilometre. This is where parking demand tends to concentrate, as multiple drivers head towards the most visible facility. Without guidance, drivers may all arrive at the same garage only to discover it is already full. With real-time data and predictive intelligence, navigation systems can dynamically redirect drivers, guiding them toward nearby alternatives.
The final moment happens inside the parking facility itself. Even after reaching a garage, drivers may still spend several minutes searching for an available space. Indoor mapping and vehicle guidance can now help drivers navigate within the structure, directing them efficiently to available spots. In this sense, the journey does not end at the garage entrance; it ends at the parking space.
The opportunity is bigger than it looks
Helping drivers park like a local may sound like a small improvement, but the impact becomes significant when viewed at city scale. When drivers stop circling, congestion decreases and journey times reduce. When parking assets become easier to find, utilization improves. And when arriving somewhere becomes predictable rather than stressful, the overall experience of moving through a city finally starts to feel as it should.
The infrastructure to make this possible is already emerging. Vehicles are increasingly connected, navigation systems are sophisticated, and parking data is becoming more widely available. The real opportunity now lies in bringing these pieces together so that every driver, in every city, can make better decisions in real time.
Because the goal was never just smarter parking. It's about how you feel when you arrive, and the difference it makes when every part of the journey flows seamlessly from start to finish. Transforming the experience of an entire city begins with something as simple as helping people park like a local.
By Duncan Licence, Head of Automotive & Data, Arrive