Los Angeles has always been a hotbe of innovation and development. We may not be as bleeding edge as San Francisco as one of my favorite angel investors, Jason Calacanis continually reminds me on his podcast This Week in Startups, but we still have produced some pretty tech savy companies like Snapchat, Tinder, Whisper, and Science. When I heard LA was going to ban a parking app, I was a little surprised. The apps Los Angeles is in the process of banning are pay-to-park apps. These are apps that encourage people to occupy in-demand parking spots and then sell or rent them out to others that need that spot.

There is really only one app this currently applies to and that’s MonkeyParking. MonkeyParking recently moved into the areas of Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and Los Angeles and definitely ruffled some feathers. They arrive with plenty of baggage too. To begin with, the were basically run out of their home town, San Francisco, because people there didn’t have a stomach for private citizens selling and/or renting out public parking spots. Unfortunately for MonkeyParking, it doesn’t look like Los Angeles is too fond of the idea either.

Council member Mike Bonin recently put through a motion to outlaw parking-sale apps in Los Angeles. Bonin contends this is, “extortion masquerading as the sharing economy.” Ouch.

The sharing economy Bonin refers to has spawned numerous mega-services that have revolutionized industry today. These include such companies and sharing apps as Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb. Many of these same sharing apps are also entangled in their own form of litigation and regulatory battles throughout the country.

Our generation's desire to shake things up and “share” doesn’t always go over well with those that feel some of these innovations go too far. Hey, I like to share, but I’m not to happy about my neighbor subletting her apartment and I end up having to deal with people partying all night on a weekday. Plus, they didn’t even invite me to the party. How rude.

MonkeyParking CEO Paolo Dobrowolny, says his app is not trying to make it more difficult to park and would actually help LA to better align the value of the parking spots. He claims his company would work to prevent greedy sellers sitting on spots for exorbitant amounts of time and is willing to work with cities for revenue-sharing agreements. That sounds like something LA would be all about, especially if they lose some of the revenue from their parking ticket cash cow.

At this point though, if the city of Los Angeles did flip-flop and allow such apps after banning them simply because there were getting a piece of the profits, it would look awfully bad for someone. With that said, it wouldn’t be the first time money trumped politics. We will have to wait and see if MonkeyParking has enough clout to make it’s vision of the shared-parking future a reality in Los Angeles.

Nicole Sylianteng didn’t mean to revolutionize parking signs in New York, Los Angeles, and Vancouver. She simply needed to build her portfolio for her MFA, but when a great idea sees the light of day, people tend to take notice.

In a way, I think of Nicole and I as being two peas in a pod. We both saw a common problem and went about trying to solve it. The problem was the ridiculously confusing parking signs in urban areas. She attacked it with her background in design by creating signs that simplified sometimes six contradictory signs into one simple one, while I applied technology and created an app, Park Safe LA.

Sylianteng’s innovation was soon recognized in the popular media with articles appearing in The Atlantic, Wired Magazine, and Gizmodo among others. People in the world of traffic and transportation have taken notice too.

Recently, councilmember Paul Krekorian, of district 2 in Los Angeles, recently put forward a motion for a test program of Nicole’s signs. Exactly what districts will be testing the signs out remains to be seen, but sources close to the issue say a number of Councilmembers are jockeying for the opportunity to ease the parking sign burden in their districts with Sylianteng's signs. Vancouver also recently approached Nicole and it appears to only be a matter of time before everyone discovers the simplicity of these signs.

As Sam Cook once sang, “A change is gonna come.” This change in the world of parking innovation is far overdue. “We don’t need tons of money to do a digital system,” Sylianteng explains. “We need simpler signs.” She makes a lot of sense. While people like me are trying to make it easier to understand complicated signs with technology, Sylianteng turned the entire problem on its’ head by reimagining the actual signs from scratch.

Sam Morrissey formerly the City Traffic Engineer of Santa Monica and currently Associate Vice President for the traffic analytics company Iteris warns though that changing signs can involve a lot of state and federal regulations that could take years. This means these signs may initially be used as supplements to existing signs. Either way though, it’s exciting to see innovation and truly great ideas applied to a once impenetrable problem.

It still remains to be seen what cities will signup to actually implement Nicole’s  signs after these test programs are completed, but change is definitely coming and Nicole Sylianteng is absolutely a part of the solution.

Follow Nicole's adventure in the world of parking signs at To Park or Not To Park.