Google’s Waze will now help you find the best parking spot

Waze, the real-time traffic app owned by Google, is teaming up with transportation data firm INRIX to help drivers find the best parking spot close to their destination.

Waze recently introduced a “where to park” feature, which suggests parking lots closest to a destination and allows users to navigate there directly. Additionally, if a user doesn’t select a parking lot prior to arrival, Waze will give the option to select and navigate to one when approaching a final destination. Now that feature will be supercharged thanks to INRIX’s uniquely aggregated parking data.

Flavia Sasaki Siqueira, head of business development for Waze, said the company will integrate INRIX’s parking information with its own database to expand the accuracy of the app’s “where to park” feature. “Driving around looking for spots impacts arrival times and adds unneeded frustration and stress to the entire driving experience,” she said in a statement.

INRIX — which aggregates real-time road traffic information from a variety of sources and offers it to automakers, municipalities, and news outlets — provides parking information and services to leading automakers, including Audi, BMW, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Toyota, and Volkswagen.

INRIX uses a variety of data sources to suss out how much parking is available on a given block. It combines this with pricing data from cities and private parking facilities to offer complete visualizations of where parking is light, where it's heavy, and what you'll pay at each spot.