Park Capacity & Wait Time Tracker

National parks and popular attractions are experiencing overcrowding with unpredictable wait times and parking availability. Build a real-time crowding app that aggregates visitor data, parking lot status, and estimated wait times so travelers can plan visits effectively. Target outdoor enthusiasts and families planning day trips.

National park visitation hit record highs post-pandemic and has stayed elevated, while the NPS reservation system rollout exposed real demand for capacity-aware planning tools. The closest substitute is Recreation.gov, which handles permits but offers almost nothing on real-time crowding or parking status. The $2k–10k/mo revenue band is realistic only if you can monetize through B2C subscriptions or affiliate partnerships with gear/lodging, since ad revenue at this scale is negligible — but getting to even a few thousand paying users requires solving a hard data problem: parks don't publish real-time occupancy feeds, so you're either scraping parking sensors, crowdsourcing, or negotiating data partnerships, none of which are easy. The single most likely failure mode is data quality — if your wait times are wrong even occasionally, trust collapses and users revert to calling the park visitor center.