SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 06/16/09 -- San Franciscans know they live in an expensive city, but many may not realize how much they're overpaying for parking. A collection of parking data from a local company is shedding some light. According to Urban Mapping® and its URBANWARE® Parking database, prices for off-street parking in the same general area of the city can vary greatly from one lot to another. For example, the city's most expensive lot for a weekday morning costs $17.75 for the first hour, while a lot one block away costs $7.50 for the same hour and another option six blocks away is only $2.

Further evidence is the large disparity between prices for all-day parking. To park from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on a weekday, the priciest lot costs $54. A lot 200 feet away charges less than half that amount ($25 for the day) and a spot five blocks away results in even greater savings ($11/day).

"Technology is supposed to improve our lives, yet something as rudimentary as where to park has largely been overlooked," stated Ian White, CEO of San Francisco-based Urban Mapping. "Solutions to help get us from Point A to Point B are becoming mainstream, and some do provide basic parking data, but many of the important attributes of a lot are overlooked. How do the rates change depending on the day of the week or time of day? Does the lot accept credit cards or just cash? Does it validate? Where do I actually enter and exit? We've put people on the streets to collect all this data, not just for San Francisco, but for the top 50 metropolitan areas across the country."

Other highlights from the San Francisco data include:

 -- The city's most expensive hour of parking on a weekday morning
    ($17.75) can be found in the Nob Hill area (1000 block of California
    Street)
    -- Parking during the same time in New York City can cost up to twice
       as much ($34.63/hr)
 -- The priciest lot for all day parking during the week ($54) is near the
    Ferry Building (100 block of Spear Street)
    -- Equivalent parking options in New York go as high as $73.50
 -- Parking from noon to 2 p.m. at the Westin St.-Francis on Union Square
    costs $18; for the same times, the lot under Union Square goes for $5
 -- Two hours of parking near the Transamerica Pyramid on a weekday costs
    $24 at the priciest lot; an option one block away is only $4.50
 -- Parking mid-day near AT&T Park for two hours on a non-game day can
    range from $3 up to $16 within a three block radius

Creative consumers can find even better bargains. For example, two and half hours of parking at the Embarcadero Center on a weekday afternoon costs $30. Alternatively, parking is $8 with validation from the movie theater. After paying for parking and two matinee tickets, a consumer would still have $5.50 left to spend on a small popcorn or soda.

About URBANWARE Parking

The URBANWARE Parking database provides thorough coverage of both public and privately-owned off-street and airport parking lots in the top 50 U.S. metropolitan areas and a level of data content that is unmatched in the industry. URBANWARE Parking may be licensed by periodic updates or via an API. All customers may take advantage of the product's rate calculator, which allows for highly accurate parking fees to be known when the journey is planned.

About Urban Mapping, Inc.

Urban Mapping's location-rich URBANWARE products enhance the value of local content for interactive applications. The company's flagship product, URBANWARE Neighborhoods, is a database of informal space and is used by all major portals, map platforms and Internet yellow page publishers, including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft's Virtual Earth, Idearc's SuperPages.com, MapQuest and AT&T's YellowPages.com. Urban Mapping also offers databases of mass transit systems and off-street parking lots, as well as a novel geotargeting solution focused on the needs of local search. For more information about Urban Mapping, visit http://www.urbanmapping.com or call 415.946.8170.

Urban Mapping and URBANWARE are registered trademarks of Urban Mapping, Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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