A probabilistic approach to parking: Benefits of routing instead of spotting

Urban parking is an important issue in all modern countries. Technological advances, with in-car sensors and always connected smartphones have already paved the way to an ICT solution for this problem. However, every attempt - including that of such a big companies, as Google - has failed to provide a suitable solution. So far, the appeared solutions were centered around the notion of free parking spots. This approach does not take into account the dynamics of the traffic and the drivers outside of the system. Here we propose a fundamentally different approach based on parking probabilities and parking routes. Our solution can truly reduce the time, resource and environmental damage wasted on parking place hunting, while keeping the operational costs low and the users satisfied.