VDOT Experimenting with a Commuter Parking App
App will help commuters find out whether a parking spot is available at a nearby VRE or park and ride lot.
By Hank Silverberg
CORRESPONDENT
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Looking for a parking space at a Stafford County or northern Virginia park and ride lot? There’s an app for that.
The Virginia Department of Transportation is conducting a trial run of an app called ParkZen. It allows commuters to get real time information about the availability of parking spaces at six park and ride lots, including the Virginia Railway Express stations at Brooke Road in Stafford and Leeland Road in Falmouth.
The six lots combined have more than 5,000 parking spaces, but VDOT says there has been no way until now for commuters to know how full the lots are at any given time.
“Commuters have told us that not knowing whether parking is available at commuter lots is a deterrent to using transit, carpools, vanpools or VRE trains,” says program manager Amy McElwain.
This project does not use car counters like other parking facilities such as Reagan National Airport. The whole project is dependent on voluntary participation by drivers who agree to download the app and enable location services that can only detect their car when they enter a geofenced parking lot.
As of this week, more than 200 drivers have downloaded the app.
The other locations currently participating with ParkZen include the VRE station on Backlick Road in Fairfax County, VDOT’s Stringfellow Road lot in Centreville, Saratoga lot in Springfield, and the Horner Road commuter lot in Woodbridge.
The trial project was originally supposed to end next month, but it has been extended for another six months to attract more drivers in order to evaluate its effectiveness. ParkZen needs about 15% of those using a particular lot to sign on in order for it to be accurate.
If it the experiment works, VDOT plans to expand the app to 44 other park and ride lots throughout Northern Virginia and nine more in the Fredericksburg next year.
You can download the free app from the usual places—the App store for IOS devices or the Google Play store for Android phones.
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