Today’s world has begun automating everything. Cars have become a basic mode of transportation. Being both convenient and comfortable, cars are also a necessity and luxury in our daily lives. With the world population estimated around 7 billion, one of the biggest problems faced by many developed countries is car parking management.
In hand to hand combat with managing this problem, developed countries like the United States of America are taking very bold and prominent steps to overcome this chaos. The design of new commercial buildings has a major consideration on parking spaces which is required when the building starts operating.
Every commercial building has different requirements, and there always remains a difference between the needs of commercial, industrial, and residential car parking. There are a number of commercial buildings that require a huge number of parking spaces which include residential apartment buildings, stadiums, financial and educational institutions.
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But undoubtedly, the most common parking spaces that we visit remain the shopping complexes. According to a study, there are almost 47,000 shopping centers in the United States.
Providing easily accessible parking spaces near one’s shop is also necessary so that one’s clients do not have to walk longer with their shopping bags and carts. To make the shopping experience more pleasing, the parking spaces should be wide, clean, and with clear guiding signs.
Making the parking spaces free also increases the enthusiasm of clients to stay in shopping centers for a longer period of time, decide from a massive variety, and shop more. Despite being peaceful for clients, providing free parking spaces also rise some minor issues such as crowd in the shopping centers. This is why in the shopping centers the parking spaces are provided for money.
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The charging rates can vary from state to state. In New York City, the real estate is very expensive, and the city is enduring a high population for the last two decades, so parking expenses are higher in comparison to other states.
For better shopping experience, the shopping centers also need to consider the shop owners and their ease of parking. Mostly, the shop owners are provided with free spaces and with monthly passes and clients and visitors are charged. There are two main charging choices to choose from.
First one is to charge fix rates and second is variable rates. Fixed rates clients pay the same amount of money whether he parks the vehicle for 1 hour or 24 hours. But in variable rates, the different amount is charged depending on which time of the day one is coming, the number of parking spaces available, and how many hours one wants to park the vehicle and so on.
Variable rates are sometimes favorable when you don’t need to stay in a building for a long time. In such cases, you only pay for an hour or two that is always a very reasonable fee. Other than these basic parameters, the car parking management industry has come up with some great innovative solutions.
- Underground parking:
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Underground parking is a practice which is being used since the early ’90s. It has proven itself to be both space saving and security. Underground parking saves the vehicle from all types of weather conditions. With the concrete structure, they provide protection from rain, sunlight, wind, and snow.
Underground parking also makes a building more resistant to earthquake. The structure built beneath the ground also makes buildings more resistant from shocks and aftershocks by providing an extra layer of safety thus, making the vehicle protected from the earthquake as well.
- Ease of managing the bill:
Another solution that the industry has come up with is the billing. A parking lot managing entries and exit of 1000 cars a day needs a systemic payment machines and organized arrangement of data to provide ease for the parking lot staff and clients as well.
Thanks to the heavy intervention of technology in our daily life as systems have been developed who generate customized tickets for every client with their license plate number and time of arrival. At the time of signing out, the client drops the ticket by a reading machine which calculates the charging amount and deducts it from their debit/credit cards.
- Diagonal Parking:
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Diagonal parking is a smartly designed pattern used for easy parking and removal of vehicles all across the globe. The design is especially very famous in the USA. It helps one to start the car and go right from your parking place rather than reversing or forwarding the car to drive through the exit, which normally happens when we park cars straight.
- Fully automated parking:
Fully automated car parking is one of the most advanced invention adopted by car parking management companies. In this system, every slot in the parking space remains accessible with a giant robotic arm that lifts the cars on a disk and parks them in available free space. It is very handy as it saves car parking time as well as effective to save accidents while parking cars in narrow spaces.
- Technology used:
The impact of technology is really shaping the car parking future. In its advanced form, small cameras are installed on top of every parking slot as well as a human or Artificial Intelligence backed program to guide the visitors/clients to park the car on a free slot. Car parking can either be multistory or that consisting of a few hundred to thousands of car spaces to provide the ease of locating and finding the car using a GPS system.
source:medium.com
These are only a few solutions that are currently implemented by modern car parking management industry but the best is yet to come. The future car parking spaces will have very less human interventions, and there will be high safety features that will make it more safe and accessible.
