When it comes to long drives and travels, renting a car may be the best recommendation to find the best locations. However, driving around a new city could be an unpleasant experience, especially when looking for a place to park a car. Nowadays, many people rely on applications such as Waze and/or Google Maps to navigate around and reach their destination. In fact, these apps have become an efficient and helpful companion for many travelers.
Find a parking spot
In the case of Google Maps, a new feature on parking functionality has been rolled out on Tuesday.
According to Google's blog post, the app can now be of assistance in looking for parking spaces. Product manager Jeff Albertson wrote about how it works, and it's pretty simple.
When a user plugs in a destination, there will be an option to "find parking." If tapped, a list of parking garages and lots near the destination will be prompted. Once an option is selected, the information will be noted and added to the trip. Also, there will also be walking directions from the parking spot to the end destination.
Limited availability
For now, the new parking features are only available on a small number of cities in the United States. This includes Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas/Fort Worth, DC, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis/St.
Paul, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, and Tampa.
Further, the latest upgrade is limited to Android users. The iOS version could roll out anytime in the near future. In the meantime, iOS devices can take advantage of the "parking difficulty icons" tool that Google launched in January.
According to the blog post, the find a parking spot feature is built on this previous enhancement where drivers can set up their route in the app. From there, they are notified on what the parking situation looks like at their destination.
Parking difficulty icons
The first parking feature to be introduced via Google Maps is meant to give users parking information on the go.
Google factored in the need to help people save time and effort in looking for a Parking Space. Just like the most recent feature, it is also relatively easy to use. Upon plugging in the route information, a parking difficulty icon will appear on the directions card, which is located at the bottom of the screen. To identify the parking difficulty, there is a range from limited to medium to easy. It is also based on historical parking data.
