Tu Plaza, share parking space by SMS
Although it seems to me a bit pretentious their line of presentation: Tuplaza.es is the first project in the world that allows people to share parking space through the mobile in an organized way, the truth is that it is indeed a very interesting idea.
I like the idea of being able to share my parking space when I am not using it, in exchange for being able to use other parking spaces that are free in the area where I need to park (the model of FON applied to parking spaces?). What I find even more interesting is the format of information via SMS.
The functioning of Tu Plaza is like this:
When the user registers, she will receive every day (or the period selected by the user) a message on her mobile that asks if her parking space is free (Is your parking space available today?). If it is, somebody else will be able to use it during the time indicated by the owner. The more hours a parking space is available for others to use, the more benefits the owner will accumulate to use the parking spaces of others.
If the user needs a parking space, she sends a message: Park today, and the area where she wants to park. If there is a parking space available in the area, she receives a message with information of the available space and a code that she must use to enter the corresponding garage.
The key for the functioning of this whole system apart from the SMS is the remote control Armando that allows, by means of security codes, access to the garages with available parking spaces.
As you can imagine, this whole system has some important difficulties with respect to implementation, but given the problem of parking that exists in big cities like Madrid, I understand that there will be many people willing to make the effort necessary to put it into practice.
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