Council Moves to Ban Anyone from Selling His Prime Parking Space

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From the city of Beverly Hills:

The Beverly Hills City Council passed an ordinance Tuesday that bans any form of compensation in exchange for occupancy of a publicly owned parking space. If approved on a second reading, the ordinance would go into effect 31 days after its passage.

Councilmembers voiced their support for providing real-time information on parking availability using mobile applications. However the majority of the Council was opposed to applications such as ParkingMonkey, which allows drivers to sell their public parking spot to the highest bidder. Beverly Hills has 2,700 metered public parking spaces in the city.

“Use of public space should be on a first come, first served basis,” said Mayor Lili Bosse. “Mobile applications such as this encourage price-gouging and driving while texting and is a disadvantage for anyone who does not have the latest mobile technology.”

Mobile parking applications such as ParkingMonkey create an incentive for a driver to stay in a parking space until it can be occupied by a potential buyer, which deprives other drivers of the use of that space and allows the app user to “cut in line.” In addition, any driver engaged in a transaction using a mobile application could potentially be using their cell phone and distracted while they were traveling toward a parking place.

In August 2014, after receiving a cease and desist notice from the City of San Francisco, the developer of ParkingMonkey announced that the company was launching the application in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica.

PHOTO Patch file photo

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