In the city of Zurich, the call for new parking spaces has been a contested political issue for years. Mateusz Wojdylo, then aged 36, set out to address it with a sharing app he developed himself, which aims to make more spaces available without building any new ones.
His Zurich start-up, Share.P, built the app to open up private car parks and underground garages to the public. The founder is originally from Poland and trained as an IT engineer.
What the app does
The app is a parking-management tool. Owners of private and rarely used spaces can rent them out to other drivers at a set tariff. Owners that have electric-vehicle charging points can add them to their offer.
Share.P also developed a control unit that can be fitted to a garage door in a simple installation. The unit is connected to the internet, so the door can be operated through the app. A driver reserves a space in the app and presses an “open” button to raise the door.
Payment is digital. Drivers load credit onto the app, and the parking fee is deducted after booking. It then passes automatically to the account of the space’s owner. Share.P charges a brokerage fee of 5 per cent.
Why the founder says it matters
The company says that Zurich has more than 200,000 private parking spaces that are barely used. It puts the number that stand entirely unused at about 22,000, because renting them out is not worth the administrative effort for owners. It gives the number of public spaces in the city as 32,000, of which 16,000 are in the Blue Zone.
The idea is to bring these private spaces into the public supply, first in Zurich and later in other Swiss and European cities. The founder has argued that this could raise the available supply sharply without a single new space being built.
He has also cited measurements that attribute about 70 per cent of city traffic in Zurich to drivers searching for parking. He describes this as unsustainable, as it adds noise and raises carbon dioxide emissions. Share.P presents the app as a benefit for property owners too, since it gives them an additional source of income.
Where the idea came from
The founder has said the idea arose during a visit to a family friend in Zurich. He wanted to park in the building’s underground garage, which had many free spaces, but was told the spaces were not open to the public. He later reserved a space in that garage through the app he had built.
The firm was founded in 2020. Before the app’s launch, the team of about 13 people had worked on the technology for more than a year.
What happened next
Share.P later received support from Innosuisse, the Swiss federal innovation agency. The company said it would use the grant to plan and carry out expansion into other national markets.
The company has also said that its apps are available for Android and iOS. It has since extended its work beyond private garages. It manages company car parks in Zurich, including the Hürlimann-Areal, and a pilot project with the canton in Basel is under way.
The City of Zurich is currently examining how existing unused spaces can be put to better use as part of a new parking strategy.