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Inside a Mechanical Parking Garage

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the at-least-the-valet-isn't-joyriding dept.

poisedleft writes "Slate has this article about a mechanical parking garage in DC. 'Despite the undeniable Jetsons cachet of the robo-garage, the Summit Grand Parc went automatic only because it had to. A 60-foot-by-106-foot lot behind the building, the only land available for a conventional garage, couldn't hold more than 14 spaces.' One potential problem for suffering city dwellers: long lines at rush hour."

6 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. Old Technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    This sort of technology has been widely used in Japan since the early 90s.

  2. Jetsons? by ejaw5 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It sure has been a long while...but IIRC when George Jetson arrived at work after dropping off Jane, Elroy and Astro his vehicle collapsed into a standard size briefcase which he took into the office.

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  3. Not new news by gnuman99 · · Score: 5, Informative
    I've heard of these types of parking lots being operational in places in Japan and Hong Kong for a number of years now.

    Of course, if everyone just used public transit, then public transit would be faster and we could put parks in place of parking lots. But I guess it is more convenient to sit twice as long in a grid lock...

  4. Pictures and Details by nacturation · · Score: 5, Informative

    Available here.

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  5. Other automated parking garages by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative
    Paris has a few automated parking garages. Because Paris is built on easily-tunneled limestone, it's a good place for underground garages.

    Trevipark, a British firm, has a nice, rather simple technology for modest size parking garages, with several installations in Italy. Trevipark is a silo with a turntable/elevator at the center. This technology is best suited for underground storage. It's elegant in that there's very little visible on the surface.

    Parksysteme, in Germany, has been building such systems for forty years. But they haven't had many installations.

    An automated garage operated in Manhattan in the 1960s.

    None of these systems has reached ten installations.

  6. Necessity is the mother of all invention. by mfh · · Score: 4, Informative

    Many people have commented on the fact that Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have been implementing these systems for many years now.

    The obvious observation here is that Japan and Taiwan are island countries with limited real estate and space and spatial efficiency is at a much higher premium there than it is here. Hong Kong has a similar predicament; it is landlocked by the rest of China on three sides and an ocean on the other, and has actively secured borders. (i.e., they can't just annex land or start building strip malls and boulevards like most cities in the US and Europe)

    The only American analog I can think of off the top of my head is Manhattan, NYC, but I suspect that instead of being luddites, their motives against implementing such systems are economic in nature as they are the exception to the general American rule in terms of availability of real estate to build parking garages. Being an island nation definitely has influence on cultural and technological development.

    Anyway, I suspect that entire graduate theses can be written on such a topic.

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