A young North East entrepreneur is launching a new app to help solve city centre parking problems.
Dylan McKee, 20, from Seghill, Northumberland has developed The Parking Fairy, a free app that knows where you are as you drive into Newcastle and alerts you to the nearest parking space.
Dylan, a student at Newcastle University with expertise in mobile apps, won NETV Digital Catapult’s competition to come up with an idea to use open data to ease travel problems in partnership with Sunderland Software City. Three winners were chosen and given funding to turn their ideas into reality.
The Parking Fairy launches on Monday 9th May and is available free on the App Store for iPhone and Apple Watch.
Dylan said, “I came up with the idea of The Parking Fairy to offer a simple but smart solution to the problem of struggling to find a parking space when you come into a city. Using open data provided by the North East Combined Authority, once you have The Parking Fairy app, it will know your location via geofence technology. Then, when you are coming into Newcastle, it will identify the nearest car parks with available spaces which are open by the time that you arrive. The app also will give you directions and prioritises indoor car parks so if it is raining, you do not get caught out.
It’s been great to have the support to develop this and be able to offer it free for people commuting into or visiting Newcastle. Hopefully if it’s successful I’d like to expand it to other cities within the Northern Powerhouse, starting in the North East.”
Dylan has many years’ expertise in app development, running his own business DJM Development to create his own apps and also ones commissioned by other organisations. His most successful app to date My Altitude has had over a million downloads across the world.
For more information, visit www.parkingfairyapp.com or follow @parkingfairyapp on Twitter.