My Parking Buddy website launches to aid students searching for spaces
By Roberto Luna Jr.
Feb. 12, 2015 12:18 a.m.
A new website is available to help students find spaces in UCLA’s parking lots, though campus officials say it might allow drivers to illegitimately share parking permits.
My Parking Buddy, which opened at UCLA Wednesday, is a free service that hopes to make finding a parking spot easier by matching a user’s parking schedule with other drivers’ schedules, and connecting those leaving with those arriving. Cal State Fullerton alumnus Dhaval Bhatt founded and developed the website.
Though the website has won some student fans at other schools, UCLA transportation officials said they are concerned the service will lead to students sharing official parking permits without authorization.
UCLA does not allow people to share parking permits unless they are a member of an official carpool, said Renée Fortier, executive director of UCLA Events & Transportation, in an email statement. To park at UCLA, a permit costs $231 per quarter.
If students were to start sharing permits, the price of a parking permit would need to increase, she added.
Visitor parking takes up less than 30 percent of the parking spaces on campus, but it contributes almost 50 percent of revenues to support the parking and transportation system at UCLA, Fortier said in the statement.
To sign up for the website, students and faculty must have a UCLA email.
After confirming their accounts, the site’s users will be prompted to input their schedules and the parking lots where they plan to park, and a series of algorithms will match them with other drivers.
Users are matched depending on their arrival and departure times. Users are given their match’s phone number so they can collaborate to exchange parking spaces.
Some students said they think the process is excessive because they rarely have trouble finding a parking space.
“I think that all of this is unnecessary work, and it is not a problem we should address,” said Anthony Hua, a fourth-year biology student. “I haven’t struggled to find a parking spot.”
Bhatt released the first version of his website in April 2012 to accommodate Cal State Fullerton, where students still use this service, and implemented the algorithms in his website the following summer.
When he received positive feedback from students, he decided to pursue this project more and take his website to as many universities as possible.
This service has recently become available to students at Cal State Long Beach and reached San Diego State and UCLA this week.
Collette Kok, a UCLA alumna and senior clerk at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, said she thinks the website could prove useful.
“It sounds convenient, especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays when it’s really crowded and I sometimes have to go to a different lot,” she said.
Others said they think obtaining a parking pass is harder than finding a parking spot.
“The hardest thing is getting the actual pass,” said Navid Barahmand, a third-year psychology student. “I feel like UCLA should focus on this first.”
Bhatt said he hopes to release an updated messaging and ranking system for My Parking Buddy in the summer, and apps for iPhone and Android in the fall.
In the near future, UCLA will be looking into technology to enable payment by license plate to eliminate the potential for individuals to share parking permits, Fortier said.
