Inside a Mechanical Parking Garage

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."

Comments

I can picture it now

[dicepackage]

Having some guy with a crappy car dripping oil down on your convertable.

Thanks for the typical snark Americanisms

[Durindana]

Like a robotic vacuum cleaner or a remote-control lawn mower, the automated parking garage is an object that adds almost nothing to the original.

Moron. Just because America is "not lacking in parking spaces" doesn't mean an auto-carpark isn't a massive improvement over the traditional, enormously wasteful (of space and money) parking lot. Sprawl and pollution, for starters, would be significantly less than the major, major insurmountable problems they are now in virtually all American cities if we could do away with our dependence on plentiful free parking.

Re:Thanks for the typical snark Americanisms

[be-fan]

I dunno about the other bits, but I can vouch for the sprawl one. Have you ever been to Atlanta? The city, which was designed to be driver-friendly, is ONE GIANT PARKING LOT. Seriously, you have have WalMarts with football-field sized parking slots out front. And back. And on the sides. Now, because land is so cheap, giant parking lots are probably more cost-effective, but it does make the city look like a post-apocalyptic nightmare.

IMHO, the Europeans built their cities right. Paris is half the land area of Atlanta, and utterly undrivable. However, that doesn't mean much, because there are close to 400 metro stations in the cities, plus another 150 RER stations for the suburbs. Washington DC is almost as compact (and nearly as undrivable), but its subway pales in comparison.