An eBay for Parking Spots

Dec. 13, 2006 — -- If you've ever spent a frustratingly long time looking for a parking space, a new service is sure to perk up your ears. You'll soon be able to find a spot without even having to drive around.

Since you can search online to check the weather before going outside, why not find a parking spot, too? That's what 32-year-old Andrew Rollert was thinking when he started spotscout.com out of Cambridge, Mass. "I am hoping this will kill off the expression 'looking for parking,' altogether," he says.

You'll be able to look for a spot before you even get in your car, by computer or any cell phone with Internet access.

SpotScout will serve as a kind of eBay for parking spots: Creating an online marketplace where people can trade information about available parking places and even rent out their own driveways.

Rollert plans to launch it within the next two months. He can't emphasize enough how much he hates looking for parking. "There are millions upon millions of people who are relying on a completely dumb luck activity every day of their life. It's the 21st century. I think we should be able to find a space first and then go to it."

Rollert hopes the market will come from private property owners who want to lease driveways for a few hours, or local garages that will list empty spaces at any given time, and people who own spaces they don't use during vacations.

Customers would punch in the address of a destination, along with the date and time they want to arrive. A map would offer a list of nearby available spots, showing the price of each and the time it would take to walk from there to wherever you have to be.

The service will be tested in Boston, New York and San Francisco simultaneously. Rollert then hopes to next roll it out to more cities. Eventually, he wants the service to include postings from drivers who have parked at metered spaces, auctioning their departure time to the highest bidder.