Food trucks trade assigned spaces in Washington DC

D.C. food trucks look to new platform to swap spaces assigned in lottery

"It didn’t take long after D.C. started doling out parking spaces to the city’s food trucks that the D.C., Maryland and Virginia Food Truck Association hit on one unfailing principal of economics: Where one market pops up, a secondary market will surely follow.

Food truckers, after getting their assigned spaces in the city's mobile roadway vending zones each month, were frantically hitting up the association’s message board with requests to trade days. It made for way too many emails, and not a lot of successful trades.

So the DMVFTA decided to find a better way. Now, a few months later, the association is about to launch its very own digital trading platform on its website.

...

"Hoffman had a group of masters students who needed a final project. With her guidance, those students developed a proof-of-concept program that took into account the truckers’ preferences for trades and automatically assigned new slots. In the end, the program spits out a new schedule for assigned spots that can be submitted to the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, so they are able to enforce the assignments."

HT: Paul Milgrom