What’s Coming – Next Several Weeks?

1. Draft ITS-Park objectives

 2. First cut at ITS-Park service specification

• Includes discussion of issues surrounding some of the key elements

 3. Blog six weeks report

• Progress versus the originally defined blog purpose
• Where to go from here?

Technology Trends in Car Parking – Mechanical Parking Garages – Part 2

I have perused a number of general articles describing the advantages and disadvantages of mechanical parking systems, as well as manufacturer’s reference materials. The material below is a summary of what I’ve found along with some unresolved issues.

Consumer Benefits

• No one enters your car; personal belongings are secure
• No scratches, dents or dings from drivers of other cars
• Parking becomes a pleasant experience; no long walks in bad weather
• More safe and secure than self-park garages – no fear of crime
• No stairs, elevators, lighting, video surveillance or long garage walks
• Secure and air conditioned terminal areas
• Can retrieve car in less than three minutes

Developer and Land Use Benefits

• Suitable for small sites otherwise unusable for self-park garages
• Turntables allow one terminal area for car entry and exit, depending on relative input/output timing
• Can park twice as many cars in the same amount of space as self-park garage
  • Lower ceiling height
  • Reduced space width – no space needed for door openings
  • No wide driveways and floor-to-floor turning ramps
  • Less square feet and cubic feet per car space
  • Tandem parking can be used

Environmental Benefits

• Better looking  building and/or reduced building footprint vs. self-park
• Engine off while car is moved – no fuel usage; no CO or CO2 emissions
• Can qualify for LEED sustainability points

Disadvantages

• Construction cost is approximately two times that of a self-park garage
• Operating cost is 1.5 times self-park garage
• Active energy user; requires backup power generator
• Throughput is significantly less than similar size self-park garages
  • Not suitable for high volume arrivals and departures; or traffic surges
  • Access design and car queuing requirements may be difficult
  • Average time to position car and exit a terminal space appears to be about 90 seconds
• Not suitable for very large (>1000 cars) garages? (None that size in operation)
• May require tighter construction tolerances; less land settlement tolerance

Issues

• Application limited to parking niches – land-restricted and/or high-priced land in urban environments? (Inappropriate for airport, shopping center, & suburban application?)
• Low application volumes imply a negligible influence on urban planning and city design?
• Statistics on frequency of breakdown/slowdown incidents impacting customers?
• Replacement/rebuild lives of mechanical components?

My next post had been intended to compare salient characteristics of mechanical parking garages with self-park garages and ITS-Park garages. I have now decided that it is imperative to first provide an initial draft of ITS-Park objectives and an ITS-Park specification. These materials will become the basis for garage type comparisons later.

Technology Trends in Car Parking – Mechanical Parking Garages

 

Automated parking is available and in daily operation now, in the form of mechanical parking garages. Such garages are available from a number of different manufacturers, in a variety of sizes and designs, for underground installation or in heights of up to 20 stories.

Critical questions for mechanical parking garages: (1) Are they the appropriate answer to the world’s parking problems I’ve previously defined? Or are they just a niche solution to be applied to certain specific land use situations? (2) Are they sufficiently competitive with self-park garages? (3) Will they be competitive with smartcars related ITS-Park systems as they are developed and deployed?

Parking space is particularly difficult to find in high density Asian and European cities so they are increasingly installing large numbers of automated mechanical parking structures. The U.S. has also begin constructing such parking structures, using European technology, but at a much slower rate due to differences in land availability and cost. No statistics are available which define what percentage of all parking garages built are mechanical garages – for the U.S., Europe, Japan, or the entire world. I would guess that the percentage is low, maybe on the order of 1 or 2 percent.

Such systems are based on the stacking technology used in automated warehouse facilities. A car is driven into a special above ground stall, on top of a concrete pallet; passengers unloaded; the car carrying pallet moved to a stacker crane; the crane depositing it into a remembered parking location. Some systems, however, have been designed to eliminate the complexity of pallets. Two basic system designs have been developed – linear, or rectangular, systems; and rotary, or carousel, systems.

As of 1996 data, more than 500 such systems had been installed around the world, capable of parking over 1.3 million vehicles, according to a presentation by Don Monahan of Walker Parking Consultants: http://www.walkerparking.com . A conservative growth projection indicates that a total of five to six million mechanical parking garage spaces could be in use today. The largest mechanical parking garages in use are one of 849 spaces built in Korea; one of 612 spaces in Istanbul; and one recently opened in Dubai, containing of 765 spaces and advertised as one of the three largest in the world – and the world’s fastest. A press release indicates that an even larger mechanical parking system has been contracted for in Dubai, but I’ve been unable to find detail specs.

Recent data I’ve received regarding mechanical systems being built by Wohr Systems indicates describes six different series designs offered. Wohr data shows that it has installed some 136 systems, totaling 7,275 spaces, an average size of 54 spaces per system. Their three largest series include 43 systems installed, encompassing 4001 spaces, an average size of 93 spaces. Their largest is the previously mentioned Istanbul garage, installed in 2002.

A U.S. Automated and Mechanical Parking Association (AMPA) was established in the U.S, in 2001. I’m aware of two U.S. systems installed – one in Hoboken, New Jersey and one in Washington, DC.

Here are the URL’s of some of the leading mechanical garage vendors for your follow-up:

Wohr Parking Systems:

http://www.wohr-parking.co.uk

Robotic Parking:

http://www.roboticparking.com

Westfalia Technologies, Inc.:

http://www.westfaliausa.com

Metro Parking Systems:

http://www.mp-parking.com

SpaceSaver Parking Co,:

http://spacesaverparking.com

Klaus Multiparking:

http://www.klaus-autopark.de

Park Plus, Inc.:

http://www.parkplus.co.za

My subsequent posts will cover the pros and cons of mechanical parking garages and a comparison chart of mechanical garages, self-park garages and the expected relative goals of ITS-Park garages.

Technology Trends in Parking Technology – The DARPA Urban Challenge – Part Two

The DARPA Urban Challenge competition’s challenges included meeting the following requirements, using technologies directly applicable to ITS-Park development.

• The parking requirement – The drawings below illustrate the nature of the DARPA parking requirement. They are taken from the Rules section, Technical Evaluation Criteria.  The first drawing diagrams how an autnomous vehicle accesses and leaves the parking area. The vehicle proceeds into the parking area from one of the perimeter locations; enters one designated empty parking spot out of six possible; accurately parks; backs out; and departs at a designated exit point. The second drawing shows how the vehicle’s entry into the parking space, and its parked position, were monitored for accuracy.
• The lane following requirement – Vehicles are required to follow driving lanes with an accuracy of one meter or better, including going around turns.
• The car following requirement – The vehicles use advanced adaptive cruise control technology, which adds stop-and-go queuing in a line of stopped vehicles. Vehicles must maintain a forward vehicle headway separation of one vehicle length for every 10 miles-per-hour of speed.  If the car ahead comes to a complete stop, like in stop and go traffic, the ACC system must also bring the autonomous vehicle to a stop, then automatically resume its set speed and gap when the car ahead moves forward or out of the way.

Several months after the competition, three of the autonomous vehicles “drove” unmanned around the Toyota Grand Prix race course in Long Beach – with an audience of 180,000 people in the stands. That course is 2 miles long, with 11 left and right turns to be negotiated. Think of that length, and all those turns, as being equivalent to the aisles and ramps of an ITS-Park garage. All that was missing for that demo, to better represent an ITS-Park operation, was having half a dozen parking spaces for the vehicles to enter and back out of. Simplify the technology, bring the options cost way down and you have the smartcars based portion of ITS-Ppark!