Parking Difficulty Indicator Introduced in Latest Google Maps Beta

It’s a fact of life: sometimes, finding parking can be a nightmare — particularly if you’re looking for a spot in an urban, downtown area anywhere in Southern California. But now, Google might be able to help with that.

Users of the Google Maps 9.44 beta spotted a new feature quietly introduced into the tech giant’s proprietary mapping system: a parking availability indicator. While code hinting at such a feature was discovered in the Maps 9.34 beta, the actual parking indicator has begun showing up for more users in Google’s latest beta version, according to Android Police.

The parking availability indicator shows up underneath your estimated driving time when you set a destination. So far, it seems like there are three levels of availability: easy, medium and limited. Anytime during your drive, a more detailed parking situation can be pulled up.

The feature seems similar to Google’s “popular times” indicator for restaurants and businesses. Rather than feeding you real-time parking information, the Google Maps parking indicator seems to give a rough estimate of how easy — or difficult — it “usually” is to find a parking spot near your destination, ARS Technica reported.

A similar feature was announced by Waze last September. Waze’s feature — which was built in collaboration with INRIX — actually utilizes a handful of data sources to help users gauge how much parking in available on a given city block. INRIX, a real-time data aggregation system, can also pull pricing and parking availability data from private parking lots and facilities, The Verge reported. It’s worth noting that Waze is owned by Google.

It’s currently not known when the parking indicator feature will go live on the main app. Currently, Google only allows Android users to beta test their latest Maps version, so iPhone users won’t see the feature until it rolls out officially. According to Android Authority, it’s shown up for certain Android users in the New York City and Long Island region.

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