Skateboarders often waste time traveling to overcrowded skateparks, which limits their ability to practice or enjoy their session, particularly in urban areas with limited options. A solution that provides real-time or predictive crowd levels could help users plan their visits more efficiently.

How It Could Work

One approach to solving this problem is a mobile app that displays skatepark crowd levels in real time. Users could check the app before heading out to avoid busy times. The app could gather data in two ways:

• User-reported updates: Skaters manually log crowd levels (e.g., "empty," "moderate," "crowded") when arriving or leaving.
• Automated tracking: Integration with park cameras or anonymized location data from users’ phones to estimate occupancy (where available).

Additional features might include historical trends to predict peak hours, user-submitted notes about park conditions, and alerts when crowds thin out.

Why It Could Succeed

This idea taps into an unmet need for skateboarders while leveraging familiar crowd-tracking mechanics seen in other apps. Key advantages include:

• Focused on a niche community likely to engage with skate-specific features
• Potential partnerships with skate shops and parks for promotions or data validation
• Multiple monetization paths, from sponsored content to premium features

Getting Started

A simple starting point could be an MVP in one city with basic crowd-reporting functionality. To encourage early adoption, the app could reward users for submitting data or partner with local skate communities to seed initial usage. As the user base grows, more advanced features like automated tracking could be added.

The main challenges would be ensuring accurate data and building a critical mass of users, but these could be addressed through community incentives and phased rollouts.