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Best
Wishes for a Happy and Prosperous 2007!
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Need a parking place? Good luck
December
2006
LOS
ANGELES — After circling in anguish
for 15 minutes, holiday shopper Derek Bracey
abandoned his search for free primo parking
along this city's trendy Melrose Avenue.
"You always hope it will be better,"
said Bracey, who ended up parking a half-mile
from the shop where he was buying a gift
for his brother.
This
month, millions of Americans could find
themselves in a similar predicament, fruitlessly
orbiting packed parking lots in shopping
centers, malls and downtowns as the holiday
shopping season builds toward a peak.
They
are the victims of a growing national parking
crunch, the product of ever-increasing numbers
of cars and scarcer places to put them in
many cities.
Click
here to read the full article. |
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Footprints
In
recent months, we have been receiving requests
for larger and larger designs for garage facilities.
These include a 5,000 space casino parking structure,
a 3,500 space airport parking structure and a
mixed use, 1,500 space condo and shopping plaza
parking structure.
In
each case, space was at a premium. In fact, on
all of these projects, there was no way to get
the density needed for the cars required other
than to use a compact Robotic Parking System.
It
all comes down to available “footprints.”
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It is the job of our design department
to come up with solutions to parking needs within
the footprints available. Let’s face it
- parking, while a necessity, is not the highest
and best use for most of the property on any project.
Thus, minimizing the impact of parking saves money
and makes both footprints and airspace available
for higher and better uses.
Here is how it works. Footprint
number one was for a casino property that had
virtually run out of room. With over half of their
property committed to conventional parking structures
and lots, the casino had nowhere to expand. A
nearby airport restricted the height of their
structures, and so it appeared they had no where
to go.
They came to us for a solution.
The existing 2,000 parking spaces were inadequate
to serve peak need at present, and a three year
projection indicated they would need at least
twice that number. Further, the corporation wanted
to expand the casino and hotel operations.
Solution:
a 5,000 space Robotic Parking System for cars
with an additional 100 plus spaces for tour busses,
all on a 272’ x 346’ footprint (less
than a third of their land), a height of 97’,
just under the FAA requirement and the rest of
the property, 2/3rds of it, freed up for casino
and hotel development. The
Robotic Parking Systems facility has an initial
throughput of one car every three seconds, just
slightly over the ability of the surrounding streets
to accommodate at peak movement times. People
movers (trams) are used to circulate people back
and forth from to the garage to the casino and
hotel. Special equipment aboard the trams, not
only orders up the patron’s cars to be robotically
delivered to the garages entry/exit stations but
tells the patrons at which of dozens of entry/exit
stations the car will appear. Patrons
are delivered by the trams to those entry/exit
stations and within seconds, the patron is on
his, her or their way.
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Click
here to see the design. |
It’s a true valet service with little
to no waiting for one’s car.
The
Casino and Hotel operations recovered 123,000
square feet of property times five floors
or over half a million square feet of usable
space for hotel and casino use as opposed
to using that same space to store the patrons
cars. Click
here to see the design.
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second example involves a solution that not
only eliminated a need for the developer to
provide conventional parking underground,
but also eliminated two large, circular parking
ramps that ate up a third of their retail
space. The ramps would have had cars driving
up and down an 80’ tall conventional
parking structure above the very little retail
space the ramps left behind. Our Robotic Parking
Systems' solution required only 64’
of height on the same footprint as the conventional
solution. However, our parking solution will
hold twice the cars as was originally planned
for the conventional parking area. This design
also left another third as much retail space
as the original conventional parking solution
with the only encroachment into the retail
area being our auto lifts. With a throughput
of 400 cars per hour, it is more than will
be needed to handle the residential and retail
functions. Click
here to see the design. |
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Ask us how we can help you with
your "footprint."
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Security
and Safety
Excerpted from "Parking
Structures"
Chapter by Mary S. Smith
Crime
In Parking Facilities
Parking
facilities are at somewhat higher risk of crime
– both violent and property - than many
other land uses. In 1992, parking facilities
were the third most frequent place of occurrence
for violent crime (rape, robbery assault), with
approximately 1400 per day, accounting for 8.5%
of those crimes. However, it is important to
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note that the most frequent location for a violent
crime is at, in or near one’s own residence
or a friend’s residence. Indeed, the number
of violent crimes occurring at or near residences
was three times the number in parking facilities.
Car thefts were also more likely to occur at residences,
with 50% of all car thefts and 46% of larcenies
occurring near one’s own or a friend’s
home. Parking facilities accounted for little
more than one third of all car thefts, and less
that 20 % of all larcenies (not involving victim-of
- fender contact.)
The
statistics regarding crime must also be put into
proper perspective. While there are no statistics
available on either the total number of parking
facilities or the total number of parking spaces
in the United States, it is clear that the number
is very large. According to 1990 census data,
there are 115 million working adults in the U.S.;
88% of the population uses a personal vehicle
to travel to work, and the additional 5% why uses
transit drive and park in commuter or intermodal
parking facility. Based on those numbers, it is
estimated that 75 million parking spaces are provided
for workspace and commuter parking. Add to this
all the customer and visitor parking spaces, and
it is clear that there must be in excess of 100
million nonresidential parking spaces in the U.S.
When you compare 1400 violent crimes per day with
100 million parking spaces, and the fact that
a disproportionate number of such crimes occur
at night, it is obvious that the risk of being
attacked, in general, is relatively low. Statistically,
therefore, one is not very likely to become a
victim of a violent crime in a parking facility.
Still,
it is clear that violent crimes are more likely
to occur in a parking facility than in the land
use that generates the need for the parking facility.
Why parking facilities at higher risk than other
facilities (except residential)? Parking facilities
comprise a relatively large volume of space with
relatively low activity levels. It is interesting
to note the most land uses have more square footage
devoted to parking than to the use itself. For
example, a 1,000,000 sq ft shopping center will
probably have 1,500,000 sq ft of parking. More
than 10,000 people may be at the mall at the peak
hour on a busy Christmas shopping day; however,
only a very small fraction will be in the parking
lot -which is 1.5 times as large as the mall itself
– at any one time.
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Other
features that are simply inherent to parking
facilities make security – perceived
or real – difficult, including:
- parked
cars provide hiding places and impede
distributions of lighting
-
sloping ramps, which are necessary to
provide floor to floor circulation, impede
visibility across facility
-
most parking facilities are necessarily
open to the public
-
there is an “ideal” mode of
escape – the private vehicle
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The
perception of a high risk of crime in parking
facilities is not helped by the media. TV shows
and films often feature chase/bombings/attack
scenes set in parking facilities. Although attacks
at the victim’s home are even more frequently
shown, we all rationalize that to wouldn’t
have happened in our neighborhood. Thus we are
all left with the impression that parking facilities
are high crime areas.
Even
press coverage of actual incidents adds to the
problem. In several cities, a frightening murder
in a parking facility was given front-page coverage,
as was the local official’s response (blue-ribbon
commissions, hearings and even legislation to
mandate security in parking facilities). However,
when the suspect turned out to be known to the
victim - spouse/friend/family – it was no
longer front-page news. Interestingly, according
to USDOJ, about 20% of violent crimes in parking
facilities were committed by persons known to
the victim.
(NOTE:
Robotic Parking systems are classified as low-risk
facilities and offer maximum security.)
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Your
car is at their fingertips
Introduction
As we move on with the breakthroughs involved
in the modern versions of Robotic Parking Systems,
such as incorporated heart beat sensors and bomb
sniffing equipment in entry/exit stations, car
washes and other amenities, it is always good
to keep in mind that most “modern”
parking systems remain in the relative stone ages
when it comes to keeping track of cars.
In
addition, their maintenance and accounting procedures
leave much to be desired. “Conventional”
ramped parking structures, quite in addition to
the fact that they are some of the most dangerous
facilities one could enter, require large crews
to keep them operating, to say nothing of keeping
them relatively safe.
Not
only has Robotic Parking Systems structures removed
the “stranger danger” involved in
the usual urban safari to park of retrieve one’s
ca,r but our computers, which can be remotely
monitored from almost anywhere on Earth, keep
track of all vehicles at all times and remain
ready to produce them for their owners at any
moment on demand.
To
illustrate the difference, here is an article
on what it can be like to park at Tampa International
Airport (TIA), as covered by the St. Petersburg
Times, St. Petersburg Florida.
This
article is about how many airport employees are
required to screw in a light bulb for the 30 to
40 people a day who actually “lose”
their cars at TIA.
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Your
car is at their fingertips
by Jean Heller
April 17, 2006 |
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second phase of the new remote economy parking
garage will open at Tampa International Airport
next month, giving summer vacationers an array
of new places to leave their vehicles.
Or
lose them.
Some
30 to 40 motorists a day return to the airport
with no inkling where their wheels are.
Techniques
to deal with such crises have been evolving at
the airport for 24 years and have become something
of a science, a combination of technology and
pure detective work.
"Regular
travelers do fine because they tend to park in
the same place all the time," said Joe Hills,
TIA's director of parking and ground transportation.
"Infrequent fliers and harried fliers running
for their planes have problems. Then there are
some people you wonder how they find their way
back home after they pick up the paper at the
curb in the morning."
Republic
Parking, which manages the garages and lots for
TIA, sends out six employees every midnight to
inventory every single vehicle parked in the public
facilities. They move up and down the rows recording
every license plate in every aisle on handheld
computers much like the ones used to take inventory
in supermarkets.
Click
here to read the full article. |
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888-ROBOPARK