An Internet Parking Market: Brilliant!

The Internet's great successes are all about making something far more efficient than it ever was before. And this is where ParkingSpots.com comes in.

Owning an inner-city parking space could be an inefficient cost sinkhole. You spend a few hundred dollars a month to rent a spot to put your car at night, then drive it to work and it sits empty during the day. Meanwhile, thousands of people drive into your part of the city and pay boatloads of money to park their cars in parking garages...which are generally empty all night. How silly!

Parking rates keep rising, hitting a median of $150 a month -- and a high in the U.S. of $925 in Manhattan. (London is the worst in the world, at $1200 a month.)

So the Internet says: Why not create an efficient marketplace for parking spots? If you live in the city, you list your spot and let people bid on it to park there during the work day. Two Toronto-based companies are giving that a whirl. ParkingSpots just launched. ParkingHunter has a little head start. Neither may turn into the ultimate solution, but the real fun is that both found a fascinating hole in the market and are attempting to fill it in a way that could not have happened before the Net.