Fastprk In-Ground Parking Sensors
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From around 2011, local sensor firm Worldsensing embedded in-ground Fastprk sensors in Barcelona parking bays to detect free spaces and guide drivers via app — roughly 100 in the 22@ innovation district, then 500 across Les Corts in 2014, linked to the city's Sentilo platform. Widely cited as an early smart-city showcase, it was never scaled citywide: Barcelona adopted its own ApparkB payment app instead. By around 2020 the city had wound back downtown sensors, letting ApparkB predict availability from payment data and keeping physical sensors only for niche uses such as tourist-coach bays. Worldsensing sold the Fastprk product to Urbiotica in December 2024.
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The strongest source is an independent non-academic evaluation: an audit office, a government or EU review, or an NGO. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →Sources
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The in-ground parking sensor, and what replaced it
Buried bay sensors were the emblem of the smart-city decade. Three of the cities that installed them have since taken them out, and the fourth never put any in — a rare case where the atlas can watch a technology lose.
| Project | Since | Status | Outcome | Evidence | Run by | Cost | What the city relies on today |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SFpark Demand-Responsive ParkingSan Francisco, 🇺🇸 | 2011 | Live | Succeeded | Official | Utility or public operator | not public | The pilot that made demand-responsive pricing famous retired its sensors as too costly to maintain, and now sets kerb prices from payment data. |
| SmartPark — CBD In-Ground Parking Sensor NetworkWellington, 🇳🇿 | 2016 | Completed | Scaled back | Official | City government | NZ$1.5m to install (2016) | The council pulled the whole in-ground network after eight years and went back to simpler pay-by-plate meters. |
| Fastprk In-Ground Parking SensorsBarcelona, 🇪🇸 | 2011 | Completed | Scaled back | Independent | Private company | not public | The sensor city's own parking sensors scaled back; what drivers see today is built from what drivers pay, not from the ground. |
| Riyadh Parking: Priced Curbs & Camera PatrolsRiyadh, 🇸🇦 | 2024 | Live | Ongoing | Official | City government, Private company | not public | A later scheme skipped the ground entirely: priced bays, an app, and camera cars instead of buried sensors or wardens on foot. |
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Fastprk In-Ground Parking Sensors” — Barcelona, Spain. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/barcelona-fastprk-parking-sensors/ (last verified 2026-07-25). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.