Most recent media coverage of Parking Mobility:
• Global Television News — February 22, 2010 (Video)
• Georgia Straight Geek Speak Interview — February 19, 2010
• CBC Radio’s National Spark Program Interview — February 15, 2010 (Audio clip)
• CBC Radio Calgary Interview — February 15, 2010 (Audio clip)
• Techvibes Announcement of Parking Mobility App — February 8, 2010
• CBC Television News — January 29, 2010 (Video)
Global Television News Olympics Interview
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Georgia Straight Geek Speak Interview
Original Story by Stephen Hui of The Georgia Straight – February 19, 2010
Do you ever see drivers without permits using parking spots for people with disabilities? Now, with Campbell Macdonald’s Parking Mobility application for the iPhone, you can do more than shake your head at them.
A 39-year-old, Winnipeg-born entrepreneur, Macdonald is the president of Parking Mobility, which he cofounded with Craig Spradling. Their iPhone app allows users to report cars that are illegally parked in accessible spaces to the City of Vancouver, which is participating in a trial. It also helps users find accessible parking and suggest locations for disabled parking.
With a soft launch in November 2009 and more official launch in January, the Parking Mobility app has been downloaded 3,000 times and has 2,000 active users, according to Macdonald. The company is seeking feedback from users and plans to make BlackBerry and Android versions.
The Georgia Straight reached Macdonald at his home office in Vancouver.
Why did you develop Parking Mobility?
The idea came to my business partner. He has cerebral palsy, and he dealt with the day-to-day challenge of being able to find parking, and also he found that the limited parking that was available for people with disabilities was often used by people who didn’t have a placard. So, he talked to me about this, and we tried to figure out a solution. We developed an application that allows people to report to the city when a person is parked in a spot without a placard. We thought this would be a good solution to the problem and it would help out the 15 percent of the population that have mobility issues.
How does one go about using the app?
They download it to their phone, which is free. Then, when they see a car that’s parked illegally, they launch the application. The workflow takes them through a series of four photographs of the car, and they take those photos and then submit them. That’s really all there is to it. We take some other information from the application. We take a GPS reading and a timestamp, as well as user information, and then pass that on to the city.
How has the City of Vancouver responded to the app?
They’re interested in it. Right now, they’re not really looking at new programs, just because the Olympics have really kind of superseded everything. But they were interested enough to do a trial. We’ve had an endorsement from the advisory committee to council for accessibility.
Do you know what is happening to the info that is passed on to the City of Vancouver?
Well, we’re sharing it with the parking enforcement, and we’re not getting feedback yet. But we’ll be following up with them just to see how they’re pursuing it and if the data is good enough. But they’ve said that, if the information is compelling, they’ll be issuing infractions based on the data that we provide.
How have people from the disability community responded?
It’s been pretty overwhelming. There’s not a lot of applications that are built specifically for people with disabilities, so the response has been pretty overwhelming. We also received a pretty public endorsement from the B.C. Coalition of People With Disabilities. That’s kind of an umbrella group. So, Jane Dyson from them gave us a pretty glowing endorsement. The support’s been really good.
What other applications could the Parking Mobility model be extended to?
We get that question a lot. For the moment, we’re really just focusing on accessible parking. We don’t really have the bandwidth internally to really take on more at this time, and we’d like to see a little bit of success with this. But there’s definitely other types of reporting that it could be used for. But we’re actually starting to look at applications to really help with accessibility in other areas, such as points of interest or just getting around in general.
How is the application being promoted during the Olympics?
We’re getting a little bit of word of mouth on the press, and we’re also part of DigiBC’s digital showcase, which is really a promotion of digital media within B.C. So, we’re one of 70 companies that were selected, and we’re part of the showcase down at Robson Square. So, we’re getting a little bit of promotion through that, and we expect that we’re going to get some increased attention through the Paralympic Games as well.
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CBC Radio’s National Spark Program Interview
CBC’s nationally-syndicated Spark radio program interviewed Parking Mobility President & Co-founder Campbell Macdonald on the importance of Parking Mobility and the need it fulfills to the community and to cities who use it.
You can listen to the interview here:
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CBC Radio Calgary Interview
CBC Calgary interviewed Parking Mobility CTO & Co-founder Craig Spradling on how the iPhone application works and the value to communities and cities who use it.
You can listen to the interview here:
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Parking Mobility launches Disabled Parking iPhone App trial in Vancouver
Original Story on Techvibes – February 8, 2010
This morning Vancouver startup Parking Mobility officially announced the launch of its car reporting application for the iPhone in the City of Vancouver. Parking Mobility allows citizens to report when they see a car parked in a disabled parking spot without a disability placard and share that data with the city. If all goes as planned as is the case with a City of Vancouver trial, cities will take this information and send a ticket to the owner of the car.
“This is a very powerful application for improving accessibility,” added Jane Dyson, Executive Director of the British Columbia Coalition of People with Disabilities. “Parking Mobility allows us to take meaningful action when cars are parked in disabled parking spots without a disability placard.”
Users can report cars parked in disabled parking by downloading Parking Mobility for free to their iPhone from the Apple AppStore. When they see a car parked illegally, they capture four photos of the car and submit it instantly from their phone. The application also enables citizens to identify locations of disabled parking, information which is shared with other users on their phone and the web.
If Parking Mobility takes off it will both help to improve disabled parking accessibility and help cities to provide more effective parking enforcement and generate additional revenue without the deployment of additional resources.
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Handicap parking cheaters tagged by iPhone app
Original Story on CBC News – January 29, 2010
A western Canadian non-profit company is making it easier to catch people who use handicap parking spots without a proper permit. Parking Mobility is an new iPhone application that not only helps users find accessible parking spots, it also lets them report the cheaters who misuse them. The program was developed by Vancouverite Campbell Macdonald and his Calgary business partner Craig Spradling, who has Cerebral Palsy. Macdonald said it’s difficult enough to find accessible parking spots, and even more frustrating when the spot is taken by people without a permit. “It’s really citizen reporting. We allow citizens to report on all kinds of things through 911 — this just takes it to the next level by providing documentation,” said Macdonald.
‘It’s really citizen reporting,’—Software developer Campbell MacDonald
“The user uploads a series of photos — the licence plate, the front windshield showing there isn’t a placard, a shot showing the parking spot,” said Macdonald. “We take some additional information — a GPS stamp to show where the infraction took place, a time stamp to show when it occurred,” he said. “We give that information to the city and they say, ‘OK, this provides some good documentation,’ and they send a ticket to the owner of the car.” But so far the City of Vancouver is taking the information on a trial basis, according to Carli Edwards, a city parking management engineer. “We’re waiting to see how this develops and we’re working with the developer to see how it integrates with the city system,” said Edwards. One problem, Macdonald said, is that Vancouver has only has 50 accessible parking spots under municipal control. The other 4,000 spots scattered around town are in private lots, which are not monitored by the city. Macdonald said other Canadian cities enforce all handicap parking, public and private, and he’s hoping this mobile application will prove that’s also a need in Vancouver. The pair are also developing versions of the application for BlackBerry and Android phones.