Alene Abdulian wins Rep. Brad Sherman’s 2024 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 32nd District

When asked what inspired the creation of Parqe, the student said, “Did you know that just 15 minutes of idling in a car releases 1 pound of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere!? Let’s pretend that you are going to the biggest sporting event of the season at SoFi stadium to see your favorite soccer team play (mine is Angel City). You arrive to the stadium 30 minutes early and are greeted by chaos in the parking lot, as cars are backing out of spots and nearly hitting each other, people are honking their horns and yelling expletives out of their windows, and you are stuck in a line of cars barely inching through the sea of insanity. SoFi stadium has an estimated 10,000 spots. If we assume that this pandemonium continues for the next 30 minutes until the concert starts, that one parking lot is producing 20,000 pounds of carbon dioxide in just 30 minutes. If this happens every night that SoFi stadium is hosting an event for a month, SoFi stadium’s parking lot alone would be emitting around 600,000 pounds of carbon dioxide just in the 30 minutes before each event starts.

When I entered this competition, I wanted to create an app that would have a positive impact in our community. I started by analyzing the issues that plague our dense, metropolitan city. As someone with a passion for saving the planet, I wanted to find a way to decrease our carbon footprint, as Los Angeles’ is especially high. That brought me to the idea of Parqe. One of the most overlooked contributors to carbon footprint is cars idling in parking lots. However, if there was a way to have people spend as little time in parking lots looking for parking as possible, our carbon footprint would definitely decrease. That’s where Parqe fills a large gap in the current sustainability market.”