Google Maps and Apple Maps are making parking harder than it has to be

It’s a familiar frustration for car owners: Before heading to a meeting downtown, you open a navigation app to ensure you’ll get there on time. Driving takes about as long as predicted, but you hadn’t planned for the hassle of parking. The closest lot turns out to be full, as are two others nearby. Anxiety rising, you finally find a spot further away and race several blocks to your appointment. When you arrive, you’re embarrassingly late. Popular navigation apps like Google Maps and Apple Maps have given little guidance about parking, leaving users to fend for themselves as they decide where to hunt for a spot and how much time to budget for the search. New research from MIT suggests that these services could take some of the guesswork out of parking by giving better advice. Doing so wouldn’t just lower stress levels; it could also help travelers waste fewer minutes cruising for a spot, thickening traffic and spewing pollution as they circle. The new paper, entitled “Probability-Aware