Need to find parking in Montreal? There’s an app for that

MONTREAL – Parking in the city is hard – but it’s about to get a lot easier thanks to prkng, a new Montreal-made app.

The mobile app for iPhone allows users to find vacant (and legal) parking spots based on their current GPS location.

Creators Samuel Mehenni and Arnaud Spuhler launched the application on July 6, 2015.

The idea for the app came to the two friends last year as they were “cruising for parking.”

“I found it difficult not only to find an available parking spot in central districts, but also understand Montreal’s complex regulations,” Mehenni told Global News.

“I’ve also received my fair share of parking tickets.”

As of August 6, prkng had amassed more than 10,000 users.

The app helps drivers keep tabs on when their parking time is up so they don’t find a parking ticket on their windscreen, a reality many Montrealers are accustomed to.

The company even distributed fake tickets to cars around Mount-Royal as a clever marketing campaign to promote the app.

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“The community is awesome. People report bugs in the app and errors in the data when they spot them; we make corrections as fast as we can,” said Mehenni.

“The regulation data comes from the boroughs of Montreal and, even though we tried to fix most of the errors before the launch, it’s likely there is some mismatch between the information in the app and the regulation on-street: no surprise that the latter has priority.”

For now, prkng spans the Montreal boroughs of Rosemont-La-Petite-Patrie, Plateau Mount-Royal, Ville-Marie, Villeray-Saint-Michel-Parc-Extension, Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and the Sud-Ouest.

Quebec City’s Charlesbourg, Cité-Limoilou, Sillery, and Sainte-Foi are also covered.

The Android version of the application is expected to arrive this fall.

Mehenni and his team are hoping to bring the app to cities across North America within the next year.