Live On-Street Parking Availability Coming To Hobart

From January 2025, people driving in central Hobart will be able to see where on-street parking is available in real time.

City of Hobart has confirmed this information will be made available in the EasyPark app, already used by most people in Hobart to pay for their on-street parking.

FIND is a tool already built in to the EasyPark app, though not yet enabled in Hobart. It’s being used in a number of Australian cities: Melbourne, Canberra, Newcastle, Parramatta and Gold Coast, as well as many European cities. (Seems like it started in Copenhagen because of course it did).

How does it work?

EasyPark FIND helps you find a parking spot based on the probability of any given parking spot being available. It shows a map of colour-coded streets:

Green — suggests a good chance of finding parking.
Yellow — suggests a medium chance.
Orange/red — suggests a low chance.

A hand holding a mobile phone. On the screen of the phone is a street map with streets colour-coded red and orange. — The EasyPark app showing a street map colour-coded for parking availability.

The EasyPark app can also guide you on a driving route where the chance of finding a parking spot is higher.

What about off-street parking?

City of Hobart already displays a dashboard on their website showing live parking availability in their three multi-storey carparks.

It’s not clear yet if this information will also be available in the EasyPark app.

A dashboard showing live parking data for City of Hobart's multi-storey carparks. At the top is a 3D map of Hobart with the Hobart Central, Centrepoint and Argyle Street carparks marked. Below the map are three gauges showing the number of parking spaces available in each of the carparks. — City of Hobart’s dashboard which shows the current occupancy of parking in their three multi-storey carparks. Note that this just an example image — click to go to the live data.

Our thoughts

We can’t find any evidence of the actual effects of real time parking data.

Thinking about it logically suggests that:

It should make parking in Hobart’s CBD quicker and easier.
There could be less traffic circulating looking for a park.
People may choose to delay their driving trips or travel another way if they can see parking is busy — this could help smooth out traffic peaks.
More efficient use of on-street parking may mean valuable street space can be freed up for other uses.

Equally it could be that this data worsens traffic by encouraging people to use their cars instead of other transport modalities.

Where’s it at?

City of Hobart is intending to start live on-street parking availability in January 2025. Given it’s an existing feature in an app already used in the city, it would seem to be a straightforward project and relatively low risk of significant delays. It is technology though….