TomTom has launched an On-Street Parking service to help drivers on the hunt for that hard to find parking spot. 

The service will be initially available as a data feed for 25 cities in Europe – including London and Birmingham – with additional geo-expansion to follow and will complement TomTom’s existing Off-Street Parking (parking garage) information service.

TomTom uses its supply of GPS data to determine where drivers are looking for parking places and at what times of the day. With this information, the On-Street Parking service provides drivers with the probability of finding a parking spot on a street level, as well as the average search-time for a spot. Where available, TomTom will also publish pricing and restriction information.

The new On-Street Parking service, says TomTom, could eventually be used by autonomous vehicles to seamlessly find a parking spot and park themselves.

“TomTom On-Street Parking offers drivers peace of mind and a less stressful parking experience, in addition to helping them save time and money,” says Ralf-Peter Schäfer, Head of Traffic and Travel Information at TomTom. “The service also helps reduce congestion in cities and thus lower CO2 emissions, and enables cities to better understand and manage street parking inventory to improve urban mobility”.

The full list of 25 launch cities is as follows: Brussels, Copenhagen, Marseille, Paris, Berlin, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart, Milan, Rome, Turin, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Oslo, Moscow, Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Gothenburg, Stockholm, Birmingham, London

TomTom says the data feed will be available before the end of 2016, and will be followed at a later date by a TPEG-PKI service for direct delivery of the information to end-user devices.