Lot K, a popular parking spot for commuter and residential students, appears to be completely full the evening of Sept. 16 due to a concert at EagleBank Arena. (Nathan Ferraro / Fourth Estate)

Parkeye forecasts lot availability to make the parking search easier

BY NATHAN FERRARO, MANAGING EDITOR

Tona Otoro realized within the first few months of commuting to class on George Mason’s Fairfax campus that parking was a problem. 

“Parking’s a really big issue. What if we could make an app that makes parking easier for people?” Otoro said. 

He and his friends have created a solution: a mobile app that forecasts parking lot availability with 70% accuracy. 

“We’re just commuter students who had a problem,” Otoro said. 

Otoro, a second-year Computer Science major, created the app, called Parkeye, which recommends a lot based on a student’s permit type and building destination. 

If you have a general permit and your destination is Horizon Hall? Parkeye may recommend Lot K. If it predicts Lot K is mostly filled, it may recommend Lot A instead. 

The project started a year ago after Otoro and his friends did what most freshmen would not think to, and contacted Mason Parking and Transportation directly. 

Department Director Josh Cantor responded to their concerns, and shared with the group one of the biggest issues Mason students have with parking: communication when events disturb regular parking conditions. 

Mason Parking and Transportation regularly sends university-wide email blasts to warn about parking disruptions, but no message reaches everyone.

Not all students watch their emails for parking and traffic advisories, like the one sent Sept. 15. (Nathan Ferraro / Fourth Estate)

Otoro, accompanied by former Mason student Sami Saleh and a group of their friends, started developing Parkeye in February. The students split into teams and worked, incorporating tools including Claude Code by Anthropic to develop the application.  

They set a deadline for April to present a mockup to Cantor, the parking department and Information Technology Services. 

“Being able to work with Tona and his group was exciting as we saw their passion,” Cantor wrote in an email.  

“We’re still students at the end of the day,” Otoro said. “Everybody on the team had their own commitments.” 

That didn’t stop them from working diligently to co-create an application with their target audience. 

Leading up to their deadline, Otoro and his friends conducted a survey with around 400 students and met with Student Government leaders to elicit feedback and develop an understanding of the student body’s parking woes.  

“An overwhelming majority of [students] said parking is an issue,” Otoro said. 

That’s no surprise on a campus comprising nearly 80% commuter students. 

“It’s terrible,” said Nuzn Osman, a senior Biology major who carpools every day with her friend. “Even if you leave early … you have to walk the distance to class.” 

Sinai Trejo, a junior Social Work major, said most aspects of parking on the Fairfax campus are reasonable, except for the lengthy walks from lot to building and the cost of certain permits. 

“I do think it’s kind of outrageous that the Rappahannock one is $400,” she said. 

After receiving Parking and Transportation’s approval to use historical parking data, Otoro and the student group created a limited liability corporation and prepared for their Sept. 2 release.   

Though the group is not affiliated or officially partnered with the university, the historical lot counts Cantor shared created the basis for Parkeye’s database. The app also tracks anonymous user locations to update lot capacity reports in real time.

“We crowdsource user location pings … to inform our predictions better,” Otoro said. “You can’t really predict the future just based off the past.”

Otoro made it clear Parkeye doesn’t save user location data or track identifiable users. 

“We don’t save people’s location,” he explained. 

Traffic was backed up on Patriot Circle near Eagle Bank Arena Sept. 16 due to a concert. (Nathan Ferraro / Fourth Estate)

Over 500 downloads were recorded two weeks into the app’s release, according to Sami Saleh, Otoro’s partner. 

“We haven’t made a cent,” Otoro said. “We just want to gain as much traction as possible.” 

He said the app has “a lot of potential for growth,” and that they are looking at the possibility of expanding Parkeye’s service areas to other large commuter campuses. 

“Once you’ve done it once, it’s a lot easier to replicate,” Otoro said. 

“George Mason was kind of the start … ” Saleh said. “This is the kind of app that can be implemented anywhere.”

Parkeye is currently only available for iOS devices, but Otoro said there are plans to release the app on the Google Play Store soon.