Waze Logo_WhiteBy Nathan Donnell

Circling the block (or even giving up the hunt) for parking is a familiar and painful experience for drivers across the board. Last year, drivers spent an average of 55 hours searching for parking, wasting more than $600 million in time and fuel.

Waze, the popular navigation app, wanted to make finding parking easier and faster for its more than 50 million users so they introduced the “where to park” feature, which allows users to navigate directly to a lot near their final destination. Waze has teamed up with INRIX, a leader in the connected car services space, to provide parking data and extend smart-driver services to further improve the “where to park” feature. The integration of INRIX parking information will ensure Wazers have most up-to-date and accurate information at their fingertips.

It’s an exciting development for drivers and the parking industry. What’s next? Stay tuned.

Nathan Donnell is director of business development-parking at INRIX.