Inspiration
It started with a simple frustration. At a local community event in Bellevue, me and my family spent over twenty minutes circling around the block for parking, we realized that all the parking lots were full and we saw many people leaving as well. However, despite all of this congestion, I realized that nearby driveways in homes sat completely empty. That moment sparked this idea, while cities struggle with congestion, limited, and expensive parking, there are thousands of private driveways that remain unused or have extra space for more cars every day. We saw the opportunity to turn these underutilized spaces into a shared, community-driven solution that could benefit both the drivers and homeowners making parking stress free while creating passive income.
What it does
ParkPal is a peer-to-peer parking platforms that allows homeowners to rent out their driveways for short-term parking. Like Airbnb, but for parking. This helps drivers as it provides affordable and securing parking near destinations and events and for homeowners it can be easy passive income from their unused driveways.
Our app supports:
- Search and booking of nearby driveways
- Real-time availability filtering
- Check-in/out verification
- Stripe-based ID verification and escrow payments
- Ratings and reviews
How we built it
We used:
- Firebase for Authentication and storing data
- Stripe API for payments and ID verification
- React for class-platform functionality
- Expo for prototyping
For Geospatial targeting, we built using python, GeoPandas, and OSMNx. We built an opportunity index algorithm that combines
- Demand score (event density, traffic density)
- Supply score (driveway availability)
- Economic score (garage prices)
- Accessibility score (walkability, transit proximity)
Although it's just a prototype, we were able to create a solution that can visualize high-demand zones in Seattle to guide launch priorities.
Challenges we ran into
Legal & Regulatory laws: Navigating zoning laws and liability concerns for private property rentals required research and professional consultation. We worked with a contract lawyer to develop terms and conditions, a host agreement form, and a privacy policy.
Trust & Safety: When we asked customers through our google form which received 264 responses, we saw that they were worried about edge cases such as: What if the driver damages my property? What if they don't pay? So we tried to develop a system to manage these by requiring license plates, a check-in/out system to confirm if it's booked, an escrow system to make sure that money is held safely, and more.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Designing and deploying a fully functional demo app with working booking, listing, messaging, and rating features.
- Creatively using real-world spatial data in factors like events, pricing, traffic density using GeoPandas to scientifically target launch markets.
- Conducting a survey of 264 participants validating real demand and trust barriers.
- Integrating a trust and legal compliance system with Stripe ID and escrow.
What we learned
We learned the value of customer validation, both qualitatively through interviews and surveys but also quantitatively through spatial modeling. The importance of risk management and clear legal frameworks for peer-to-peer platforms. Especially because when designing P2P platforms, there is a lot of variability and risk that comes into play because of how unpredictable people can act and creating a proper system to take care of many legal troubles is important. We had to do research on how Airbnb functions, Doordash, Uber and see how they verify their customers, make sure that orders are being complete properly and that there are no damages.
What's next for Park Pal
We hope to successfully launch this to the App store and get our first few customers in local areas by deploying in Bellevue, Redmond, and nearby areas using our geospatial data insights. We also hope to form an LLC and formalize our business. Finally, we hope to collaborate with local businesses and micro influencers to promote our brand.
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