From hackathon to App Store in 6 months
Car Pal allows drivers in Chicago to avoid parking tickets for snow restrictions or street sweeping.
Launch
We launched an app last month that allows allows drivers in Chicago to avoid parking tickets for snow restrictions or street sweeping. We are linked to City of Chicago’s open data portal and thereby know when the streets are being cleaned and which streets have winter overnight or 2in snow parking restrictions. With a single tap, Car Pal has the ability to save your car’s location & inform you about the all street parking restrictions. Car Pal uses this location data to inform you via push notifications when to move your car so you can avoid parking citations or car towing.
Car Pal Story
How did you come up with this idea?
My co-founder, Gaurav, used to own a car in Chicago and got 4 parking tickets in a 1 year period. 48 hrs after I showed him Chicago’s open data portal he called me and told me he has an idea for an app which will remind users to move their car in order to avoid street parking tickets.
Hackathon
We first started building Car Pal at a 24 hr hackathon last summer. We built a working prototype which would allow you to save your car’s location & send you a push notification a day ahead of the next street cleaning date. In addition, the app remembers where the car is parked so you don’t have to and you can share your car’s location & street restrictions (if any) with a friend. This was in essence all what the app was about.
How long did it take you?
From the hackathon to release, it took us 6 months. In the 6 months we contracted an amazing designer, re-built the app from ground up, updated it to be compatible with iOS 7.0, and added key features into Car Pal which would make the app useful all year round.
Car Pal Features
- 2in Snow & Winter parking restrictions ( Dec 1 - Apr 1)
- Street Cleaning Reminders with push notifications ( Apr 1 - Dec 1)
- Car Towing & Relocation info
- Parking Meter alarm
- Save & Share car location
Why should people use this app?
So you don’t ever have to worry about getting a ticket for routine street cleaning because you forgot to move your car.
And if that’s not enough, you can read what Chicago Sun Times wrote:
If you ignore the ban, you could get a $60 ticket, plus $150 or more for towing and a $20 fee for every day the car is held.
That’s more than $200 in parking ticket fines.
You can download our app for a mere 1% of that here.
Team
Varun Goel, co-founder, iOS engineer
Gaurav Goyal , co-founder, backend engineer
David Szef, UI/UX Designer
You can drop us a line at hello@carpalapp.com & visit our website here.
