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Google today announced its "parking difficulty" indicator in Google Maps for iOS and Android will now appear in 25 additional cities around the world. The feature was previously available in the United States only.

google-maps-parking-difficulty-800x429.jpg

The simple feature shows a "P" icon with a difficulty level such as "moderate" or "limited," based on how easy it will be to find parking at the destination entered. The feature is based on historical parking data and machine learning.

The following cities support the feature starting today:

Alicante
Amsterdam
Copenhagen
Barcelona
Cologne
Darmstadt
Düsseldorf
London
Madrid
Málaga
Manchester
Milan
Montréal
Moscow
Munich
Paris
Prague
Rio de Janeiro
Rome
São Paulo
Stockholm
Stuttgart
Toronto
Valencia
Vancouver

Google Maps is available for free on the App Store [Direct Link] for iPhone and iPad.

Article Link: Google Maps Expands 'Parking Difficulty' Indicator to 25 Cities Around the World
 
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This can be pretty useful. I never know how much time I'll have to spend circling around streets to find an empty parking spot. Sometimes there are many empty spots, sometimes I have to give up after 40 minutes of unsuccessful searching and just go somewhere else. It's different for every part of town, at every time of day, and I don't know them all by heart. Though, it can easily be estimated from traffic. If there's heavy traffic, you bet the parking spots are all taken.

What I wish they included is the price of parking at each time of day. This is readily available online and would be super handy to have directly in Google maps. "If you park here, it will cost this much per hour until 18:00 and you can't stay for more than 3 hours." that would save a lot of Googling each time.

Oh and how about a way to pay for your parking ticket from Google maps? Automatic zone recognition, time calculation, etc... There are some apps to do it but they take a bounty. I bet Google could beat them.
 
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This is awesome. I won't use it because I care about privacy and don't trust Google, but I am glad Google is innovating because it forces Apple to keep up.
 
This is awesome. I won't use it because I care about privacy and don't trust Google, but I am glad Google is innovating because it forces Apple to keep up.

Regrettably, functionality wise Apple Maps consistently fail to keep up with Google. By the time they start catching up, Google comes up with another hyper jump and the pattern repeats itself.
 
Regrettably, functionality wise Apple Maps consistently fail to keep up with Google. By the time they start catching up, Google comes up with another hyper jump and the pattern repeats itself.

Agreed. Apple maps is comically wrong quite often. Apple, by their own admission, woefully underestimated what it would take to be in the maps game.

But I suffer through it for privacy sake. The good news is Apple doesn't need to match google—I don't care about hiking trial 360 views. It's cool, but not a requirement. I just need apple to get driving directions accurate and smart and cover all major markets for public transportation.
 
Don't know why they bothered including London; there's never any parking. Madrid's not much better...
 
I just need apple to get driving directions accurate and smart and cover all major markets for public transportation.

And this is exactly the area where they still fail spectacularly. No public transportation in an international hub of Geneva, Switzerland (Google had it for years) and plain wrong old road layout 10 miles away from it in France, despite five (!) error reports from me for the same spot over the last year (!). Waze & Google, meantime, both have it spot on and Waze had it right first, within weeks. So I use Waze for driving and glance at Apple Maps from time to time hoping they would have caught up.
 
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Apple Map is at least 10 years behind Google in functionality. It will take them many years to just catch up with GM.
 
This can be pretty useful. I never know how much time I'll have to spend circling around streets to find an empty parking spot. Sometimes there are many empty spots, sometimes I have to give up after 40 minutes of unsuccessful searching and just go somewhere else. It's different for every part of town, at every time of day, and I don't know them all by heart. Though, it can easily be estimated from traffic. If there's heavy traffic, you bet the parking spots are all taken.

What I wish they included is the price of parking at each time of day. This is readily available online and would be super handy to have directly in Google maps. "If you park here, it will cost this much per hour until 18:00 and you can't stay for more than 3 hours." that would save a lot of Googling each time.

Oh and how about a way to pay for your parking ticket from Google maps? Automatic zone recognition, time calculation, etc...

City parking tickets are a big scam. They depend on the income so if any app becomes successful at helping people avoid violating parking restrictions you can bet cities will try to find a way to thwart it. I remember seeing on the news years ago a lady was going around town feeding expired meters as an act of good will. The city forced her to stop by making it illegal. Cities put up temporary no parking signs a day or two before some street event and even if your car was already parked there and you didn't see the signs because perhaps you were sick at home or simply decided not to drive for a couple days, your car is towed and there's nothing you can do to dispute it. Some cities have city-wide overnight street parking restrictions and don't post any signs except one on each street where you enter the city. If you wander within the boundaries of one of these areas looking for a parking spot but were driving next to a big truck obstructing your view as you passed the sign, you're simply unlucky. Stay parked a few minutes too late on a block with no parking restriction signs and boom $70 gone and you have no idea why and there was no way you could have avoided it. They are scammers.
 
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