Have you experienced having difficulty looking for a parking lot when you were driving a car? I think most of you have.
However, this problem has been solved by a company named Akkipa. The company has developed a system of providing parking lots for car drivers.
For example, on a Sunday morning, you are going to watch a baseball match in a stadium in your car, but the parking lot of the stadium has already filled to capacity. So you have to look for a parking lot around the stadium.
As a result, you can imagine that there are many drivers running around the stadium every Sunday. So people living around the stadium are in trouble because there are traffic jams on Sundays.
To solve this problem, the company Akippa started sharing service of parking lots.
On Sundays, the parking lots of companies, factories, city halls and some private houses near the stadium are not used.
Akippa contracts with the owners of parking lots to rent them. The charge for parking is from 1,000 yen to 3,500 yen. The one charged 3,500 yen is located in the nearest to the stadium.
The charge goes for half and half between the owner and the company.
Car drivers can reserve parking lots in advance, so they don’t have to look for them around the event venues. Some drivers buy a pass to use the same parking lots through a year.
As for the parking lots of private houses, car insurance companies can tell Akipa whose ones are not used on Sundays. It is because some old
people who have already returned their drivers’ licenses and canceled their
car insurances must have vacant parking lots.
Thanks to the advances in information technology, this kind of sharing service of parking lots is being conducted by the company. It has already contracted with about 40,000 owners of parking lots all over Japan.
This service brings a profit to car drivers, owners of parking lots, car insurance companies, people living around event venues and Akippa.
I was impressed by the creativity and invention of the president of the company, Mr. Genki Kanaya.