Reserve Your Parking Space In Advance

"Taking a cue from Web-based reservation systems used by restaurants, airlines and movie theaters, more companies and cities are offering services that let people reserve parking spaces online or by cellphone.

The services come as traffic is growing worse around the country and are meant to help ease the traffic tie-ups caused by drivers cruising for a parking spot on the street, where charges tend to be lower than garage rates.

...MobileParking LLC has a service in which users call 800-PARK-123 to check parking availability and reserve spots at roughly 400 parking facilities in Baltimore, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, among other cities. The Bowie, Md., company plans a nationwide launch of the service later this year when reservations will be possible at roughly 1,000 facilities around the country."

[Editor's note: This article is available to subscribers for a period of six days.]

Thanks to Mott Smith