A multistorey car park (

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

and

Singapore English Singapore English (SgE, SE, en-SG) (similar and related to British English) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Singapore. In Singapore, English is spoken in two main forms: Singaporean Standard English (indistinguisha ...

) or parking garage (

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances i ...

), also called a multistory, parking building, parking structure, parkade (mainly

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

), parking ramp, parking deck or indoor parking, is a building designed for car, motorcycle & bicycle parking and where there are a number of floors or levels on which parking takes place. It is essentially an indoor, stacked car park. The first known multistory facility was built in London in 1901, and the first underground parking was built in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

in 1904. (See History, below.) The term multistory is almost never used in the US, since parking structures are almost all multiple levels. Parking structures may be heated if they are enclosed. Design of parking structures can add considerable cost for planning new developments, and can be mandated by cities in new building parking requirements. Some cities such as London have abolished previously enacted minimum parking requirements. Minimum parking requirements are a hallmark of zoning and planning codes for municipalities (States don't prescribe parking requirements, while counties and cities can) in the USA. arking Structures by Mary S. Smith, et al. ISBN 0-7923-7213-11]

History

The Modern Multi-Floor Garage (1929) - p

The earliest known multi-story car park was opened in May 1901 by City & Suburban Electric Carriage Company at 6 Denman Street, central London. The location had space for 100 vehicles over seven floors, totaling 19,000 square feet. The same company opened a second location in 1902 for 230 vehicles. The company specialized in the sale, storage, valeting and on-demand delivery of electric vehicles that could travel about 40 miles and had a top speed of 20 miles per hour. Built between 1898 and 1906 in Barcelona, Spain, Casa Batllo is the house of the Dragon with its delightful stained-glass windows, a winding roof-back: colorful as a rainbow. Casa Batlló is known for another innovation – the first underground parking anywhere. Designed by the Iconic Architect Antoni Gaudi, it is remarkable for any parking designs for its interior below-grade circular helix built in 1904

The earliest known parking garage in the United States was built in 1918 for the Hotel La Salle at 215 West Washington Street in the West Loop area of downtown Chicago, Illinois. It was designed by Holabird and Roche. The Hotel La Salle was demolished in 1976, but the parking structure remained because it had been designated as preliminary landmark status and the structure was several blocks from the hotel. It was demolished in 2005 after failing to receive landmark status from the city of Chicago. A 49-story apartment tower, 215 West, has taken its place, also featuring a parking garage. When the Capital Garage in Washington, D.C. was built in 1927, it was reportedly the largest parking structure of its kind in the country. It was imploded in 1974.

Design

The movement of vehicles between floors can take place by means of: * interior inclined parking ramps and express ramps without parking – common * interior circular/helical express ramps * exterior ramps – which may take the form of a circular/helical ramp * vehicle lifts (or elevators) – the least common * automated robot systems – combination of ramp and elevator Where the car park is built on sloping land, it may be split-level or have sloped parking. Many parking structures are independent buildings dedicated exclusively to that use. The design loads for car parks are often less than the office building they serve (50 psf versus 80 00psf), leading to long floor spans of 55–65 feet that permit cars to park in rows without supporting columns in between alled long span Podium parking below High/Mid rise buildings are often short span 25–30 feet clear between columns, since office/residential/retail floors above require more support 00 psf per International Building Code Columns in short span structures obstruct row based parking spaces and will be less efficient than long span designs; parking efficiency is measured in cars per level square footage ar count/level area Common structural systems in the United States for long span structures are

prestressed concrete Prestressed concrete is a form of concrete used in construction. It is substantially "prestressed" ( compressed) during production, in a manner that strengthens it against tensile forces which will exist when in service. Post-tensioned concreted i ...

double-tee A double tee or double-T beam is a load-bearing structure that resembles two T-beams connected to each other side by side. The strong bond of the flange (horizontal section) and the two webs (vertical members, also known as stems) creates a struc ...

floor systems, post-tensioned cast-in-place concrete floor systems or short span podium parking with post tensioned slabs and drop panels rop heads. Steel embeds or thicker slabs can eliminate the need for drop panels, providing higher clearances for higher profile vehicles. In recent times, parking structures built to serve residential and some business properties have been built as part of a larger building, often underground as part of the basement, such as the parking lot at the

Atlantic Station Atlantic Station is a neighborhood on the northwestern edge of Midtown Atlanta, Georgia, United States comprising a retail district, office space, condominiums, townhomes and apartment buildings. First planned in the mid-1990s and officially op ...

redevelopment in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

. This saves land for other uses (as opposed surface parking), is cheaper and more practical in most cases than a separate structure, and is hidden from view. It protects customers and their cars from weather such as rain, snow, or hot summer sunshine that raises a vehicle's interior temperature to extremely high levels. Underground parking of only two levels was considered an innovative concept in 1964, when developer

Louis Lesser Louis Lesser (June 15, 1916 – January 29, 2013) was an American businessman. He developed property across the United States, predominantly around the Los Angeles area; he also purchased and managed property. Lesser developed Barrington Plaza, ...

developed a two-level underground parking structure under six 10-storey high-rise residential halls at

California State University, Los Angeles California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA) is a public university in Los Angeles, California. It is part of the 23-campus California State University (CSU) system. Cal State LA offers 142 bachelor's degrees, 122 master's degrees, ...

, which lacked space for horizontal expansion in the university. The simple two-level parking structure was considered unusual enough in 1964 that a separate newspaper section entitled "Parking Underground" described the parking lot as an innovative "concept" and as "subterranean spaces".Los Angeles Times, 25 June 1963, "High Rise Developer Defends Loss of View to Convenience"Los Angeles Times, 15 March 1964, Tom Cameron, "$118 Million Going into Expansion at L.A. State" In

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

, a 2,400 space underground parking structure below

Nathan Phillips Square Nathan Phillips Square is an urban plaza in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It forms the forecourt to Toronto City Hall, or ''New City Hall'', at the intersection of Queen Street West and Bay Street, and is named for Nathan Phillips, mayor of Tor ...

is one of the world's largest. Parking which serve shopping centers can be built adjacent to the center for easier access at each floor between shops and parking. One example is Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, USA, which has two large parking lots attached to the building, at the eastern and western ends. A common position for parking within shopping centers in the UK is on the roof, around the various utility systems, enabling customers to take lifts straight down into the center. Examples of such are The Oracle in

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spelling ...

and

Festival Place Festival Place is a shopping centre in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England which opened on Tuesday, 22 October 2002. It houses over 200 shopsBasingstoke. Parking Garages without mixed use can provide excellent uses for the Roof area: The Grove Parking Garage is the site for movies on its 8th level roof, The Grand Prix of Long Beach, CA can be viewed from the Roof level of The Aquarium of the Pacific Parking Garage and The Pike Parking Garage (opposite the Queensway Structure) were built with a thickened post tensioned roof slab to accommodate crowds of people. These parking structures often have low ceiling clearances '-2" and 8'-4" for accessible parking which restrict access by

full-size van A van is a type of road vehicle used for transporting goods or people. Depending on the type of van, it can be bigger or smaller than a pickup truck and SUV, and bigger than a common car. There is some varying in the scope of the word across ...

s and other large vehicles. On 15 December 2013, a man was killed during a robbery in the parking garage at

The Mall at Short Hills The Mall at Short Hills, also known as the Short Hills Mall, is a shopping mall located in the Short Hills section of Millburn, New Jersey, United States. It is located west of Newark Airport and west of Manhattan, and is situated near both M ...

Millburn, New Jersey Millburn is a suburban township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States census, the township's population was 20,149, reflecting an increase of 384 (+1.9%) from the 19,765 counted in the 2000 Census, which had ...

. The paramedics responding to the shooting were delayed because their ambulance was too large to enter the structure. In the United States, costs for parking garages are estimated to cost between $25,000 per space, with underground parking costing around $35,000 per space.

Structural integrity

Parking structures are subjected to the heavy and shifting loads of moving vehicles, and must bear the associated physical stresses.

Expansion joint An expansion joint, or movement joint, is an assembly designed to hold parts together while safely absorbing temperature-induced expansion and contraction of building materials, and vibration, or to allow movement due to ground settlement or seis ...

s are used between sections not only for thermal expansion but to accommodate the flexing of the structure's sections due to vehicle traffic. Parking structures are generally not subject to

building inspection A building inspection is an inspection performed by a building inspector, a person who is employed by either a city, township or county and is usually certified in one or more disciplines qualifying them to make professional judgment about whether ...

s after being checked for their initial occupancy permit.

Seismic retrofit Seismic retrofitting is the modification of existing structures to make them more resistant to seismic activity, ground motion, or soil failure due to earthquakes. With better understanding of seismic demand on structures and with our recent exp ...

s can be applied where earthquakes are an issue. Some parking structures have partly collapsed, either during construction or years later. In July 2009 a fourth-floor section failed at the Centergy building in

midtown Atlanta Midtown Atlanta, or Midtown, is a high-density commercial and residential neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. The exact geographical extent of the area is ill-defined due to differing definitions used by the city, residents, and local business ...

, pancaking down and destroying more than 30 vehicles but injuring no-one. In December 2007, a car crashed into the wall of the deck at the SouthPark Mall in

Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...

, weakening it and causing a small collapse which destroyed two cars below. On the same day, one under construction in

Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...

collapsed as concrete was being poured on the sixth floor. In November 2008, the sudden collapse of the middle level of a deck in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple ...

was preceded by warning signs some weeks before, including cracks and water leaks. In June 2012, the

Algo Centre Mall The Algo Centre Mall (legally Eastwood Mall since 2005 but almost never referred to as such) was a mall and hotel located on Highway 108 in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada. It was the largest commercial complex in the area. When the community was hi ...

's rooftop parking deck collapsed into the building, crashing through the upper level lottery kiosk adjacent to the food court and escalators to the ground floor below, killing two people. In October 2012 four people were killed and nine more injured when a parking structure under construction at a campus of

Miami-Dade College Miami Dade College (Miami Dade, MDC or Dade) is a public college in Miami, Florida. Founded in 1959, it has a total of eight campuses and twenty-one outreach centers throughout Miami-Dade County. It is the largest college in the Florida Colle ...

in Florida collapsed, purportedly due to an unfinished column. The Surfside condominium's main building's collapse that killed ninety-eight people was likely caused by the failure of the long-term degradation of reinforced concrete structural support in the basement-level parking garage.

Precast parking structures

As multi-story car parks have become more common since the middle of the twentieth century, many constructions of such structures have been using

precast concrete Precast concrete is a construction product produced by casting concrete in a reusable mold or "form" which is then cured in a controlled environment, transported to the construction site and maneuvered into place; examples include precast bea ...

to reduce the construction time. The design involves putting parking structure parts together. The parts of precast concrete include multi-story structural wall panels, interior and exterior columns, structural floors,

girder A girder () is a support beam used in construction. It is the main horizontal support of a structure which supports smaller beams. Girders often have an I-beam cross section composed of two load-bearing ''flanges'' separated by a stabilizing ...

s, wall panels, stairs and slabs. The precast concrete parts are transported using flatbed semi-trailers to the sites. The structural floor modules may need to be laid tilted during the transportation in order to cover as large floor area as possible while they can be easily transported on the roadways. The modules are lifted using

precast concrete lifting anchor system This information sets out some of the basic considerations taken into account by the lifting design engineer. Compliance Statements like those in AS3850, "Because of the mode in which failure can occur, it may be necessary to test complete syste ...

s at the sites for assembly. Decorations may include using of covers to close the holes in the precast concrete that contains the lifting anchors, and installing facades to the exterior of the structures. In modern construction of the precast modules, there are other features to improve the strength of the structure. An example is to use prestressed strands on post-tensioned concrete for the construction of the

shear wall In structural engineering, a shear wall is a vertical element of a system that is designed to resist in- plane lateral forces, typically wind and seismic loads. In many jurisdictions, the International Building Code and International Residential Co ...

s. Another example is the use of

carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer Carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (American English), carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers (Commonwealth English), carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics, carbon-fiber reinforced-thermoplastic (CFRP, CRP, CFRTP), also known as carbon fiber, carbon compo ...

to replace steel wire mesh to lighten the load and yield more corrosion resistant especially for the cold-climate areas which use salt for melting snow.

Architectural value

These structures are not usually known for their architectural value. As ''

Architectural Record ''Architectural Record'' is a US-based monthly magazine dedicated to architecture and interior design. "The Record," as it is sometimes colloquially referred to, is widely-recognized as an important historical record of the unfolding debates in a ...

'' has noted, "In the Pantheon of Building Types, the parking garage lurks somewhere in the vicinity of prisons and toll plazas." ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' has labeled parking structures as "the grim afterthought of American design". A handful of structures have received considerable praise for their design, including *

1111 Lincoln Road 1111 Lincoln Road is a parking garage in the South Beach section of Miami Beach, Florida, designed by the internationally known Swiss architectural firm of Herzog & de Meuron. It is located at the western end of the Lincoln Road Mall at the inte ...

, in the South Beach section of Miami Beach, Florida and designed by the internationally known Swiss architectural firm of

Herzog & de Meuron Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd.,
" Herzog & de Meuron. Retrieved on 11 October 2012. "Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd. R ...

. *The Brutalist Preston bus station in the United Kingdom, which incorporates a multistory car park *

Castle Terrace Car Park Castle Terrace Car Park is a car park in Edinburgh in the brutalist style which was designated as a listed building in October 2019. Opened in 1964 and finished around 1966, it is the first modern multistorey car park built in Scotland, and an ...

in Edinburgh, United Kingdom *In the United States, several have been listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

, including Boston's

North Terminal Garage The North Terminal Garage is a historic parking garage on 600 Commercial Street in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts. The three-story concrete garage was built in 1925 to a design by Little & Russell. It is a rare surviving parking facili ...

. In more recent developments, Queensway Bay Parking Garage, Long Beach CA, has received awards for it unique facade in 1992, Designed by International Parking Design and built by Bomel Construction Company Inc.

Nomenclature

The term ''multistorey car park'' (often abbreviated to ''multistorey'' or ''multistory'') is used in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and many

Commonwealth of Nations The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the ...

countries, and it is nowadays most commonly spelled without a hyphen. In the United States, the term ''parking structure'' is used, especially when it is necessary to distinguish such a structure from the "garage" connected with a house. In some places in North America, "parking garage" refers only to an indoor, often underground, structure. Outdoor, multi-level parking facilities are referred to by a number of regional terms: *Parking garage is used, to varying degrees, throughout the U.S. and Canada as well often referring to underground parking, and designed professionally by

Structural Engineers and Architects A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

; *Parking Structure is used worldwide, and synonymously with Parking garage. *Parking deck is used mostly in the Southern United States. *Parking ramp is used in the upper Midwest, especially

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

and

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

, and has been observed as far east as

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...

. *Parkade is widely used in Western Canada and South Africa. *Parking building is used in New Zealand. Architects and structural engineers in the USA are likely to call it a parking structure since their work is all about structures and since that term is the vernacular in the United States. When constructed as the base of a high-rise, it is sometimes called a parking podium. United States

building codes A building code (also building control or building regulations) is a set of rules that specify the standards for constructed objects such as buildings and non-building structures. Buildings must conform to the code to obtain planning permiss ...

use the term open parking garage to refer to a structure designed for car storage that has openings along at least 40% of the perimeter, as opposed to an enclosed parking garage that requires mechanical ventilation. Natural or mechanical ventilation provides fresh air flow to disperse car exhaust in normal conditions, or hot gas and smoke in case of fire. Typically parking consultants in the UK describe the number of car park floors in terms of "G+x". G stands for ground and x for the number of floors above ground. For example, G+5 is a multi-story car park structure with a ground floor and 5 floors above that, i.e. a total of 6 floors. The preceding does not apply to the United States where B+x refers to basement levels ascending in number x while descending in elevation, L1 or ground level nlike European standards where ground level is below Level 1with added levels as L2, etc.

Construction types

* Concrete * Steel structure * Automated (mechanical)

Steel structure

Structure car parks are car parks made of structural steel components connected to each other to carry the loads and provide full structural rigidity. Steel is a high-strength material requiring less material than other types of structures like concrete and timber. Steel construction features: * Cost savings: inexpensive to manufacture and erect, and requires less maintenance than traditional building methods. * Speed: Allows construction/prefabrication off-site with rapid installation on-site. Some suppliers claim construction in days. * Durability: Suppliers claim 50-plus years lifespan. * Removability: Steel car park structure could be designed to be removed at a later date. * Expandability: Steel car park structures can be expanded easily at a later date. * Creativity: Steel allows for long column-free spans. The ceiling slab of the steel structure car park is typically made of composite material such as corrugated steel sheets and concrete. The surface of the first-floor parking can be left bare or covered with epoxy or tarmac.

Foundationless and modular

Demand, steel features, and innovation have led to the development of a foundationless, modular, removable steel car park structure. Parking demand often grows quickly, significantly and sometimes unexpectedly. Modular steel car parks could be the proper solution if the surface area available is not sufficient and can be expanded upwards, or whenever it is not feasible to build up a multi-story parking. The development of the building concept of modular car parks came about by using the modular assembling method of vertical and horizontal elements (such as columns and beams) Modular car park structures are versatile and can be built in phases or in different sizes and shape. The solution makes it possible to develop a parking structure even in case of particular conditions or constraints, such as archaeological sites or city centres, because it allows: * To virtually double the parking surface without leaving any footprint on the ground, as no settlement for excavations or traditional foundations is needed; * To double the parking surface by means of a light steel single-deck car park system. * Prefab modular components of the system make each project versatile and suitable for both large and small sized areas. These parking structures are generally demountable and can be relocated to avoid making the choice of converting a surface to parking area irrevocably. They could be used as permanent structures or are conceived as temporary parking facilities for temporary parking demand needs. A number of parking decks have been demounted after a few years – to make room for the development of a permanent structure – and relocated to respond to local parking demand.

Automated parking

Automatic-Underground-Car-Storage-Thessaloniki

The earliest use of an

automated parking system An automated (car) parking system (APS) is a mechanical system designed to minimize the area and/or volume required for parking cars. Like a multi-story parking garage, an APS provides parking for cars on multiple levels stacked vertically to ma ...

(APS) was in Paris in 1905 at the Garage Rue de Ponthieu.Sanders McDonald, Shanno
"Cars, Parking and Sustainability"
, ''The Transportation Research Forum'' http://www.trforum.org/.Retrieved on 16 October 2012. The APS consisted of a groundbreaking multi-story concrete structure with an internal elevator to transport cars to upper levels where attendants parked the cars. A 1931 ''

Popular Mechanics ''Popular Mechanics'' (sometimes PM or PopMech) is a magazine of popular science and technology, featuring automotive, home, outdoor, electronics, science, do-it-yourself, and technology topics. Military topics, aviation and transportation o ...

'' article speculated about design for an underground garage where the car is taken to a parking area by a

conveyor A conveyor system is a common piece of mechanical handling equipment that moves materials from one location to another. Conveyors are especially useful in applications involving the transport of heavy or bulky materials. Conveyor systems allow ...

then an elevator to shuttles mounted on rails. The total cost of ownership of automated parking needs to be carefully considered. The actual cost of construction of automated car parks is typically higher than conventional car park structures, however, this can be offset by the higher space efficiency including reduced excavation waste from minimized footprints. The cost of the mechanical equipment needed to transport the cars needs to be added to the building cost. In addition, operation and maintenance costs of the mechanical equipment need to be added in order to determine the total cost of ownership. Other costs could be saved, for example, there is no need for an energy-intensive ventilating system, since cars are not driven inside and human cashiers or security personnel may not be needed. For naturally ventilated car parks structures, the ventilation equipment is not needed. Automated car parks rely on similar technology to that used for mechanical handling and document retrieval. The driver leaves the car in an entrance module, and it is then transported to a parking slot by a robotic trolley. For the driver, the process of parking is reduced to leaving the car inside an entrance module. At peak periods a wait may occur before entering or leaving, because loading passengers and luggage occurs at the entrance and exit rather than at the parking stall. This loading blocks the entrance or exit from being available to others. It is generally not recommended to use automated car parks for high peak hour volume facilities. Additional factors that need to be taken into consideration are: * Fear of breakdowns (How does the user get the car back) * Maintenance contracts needed with suppliers Automotive factories and car dealerships often use automated car parks to store inventory, which makes best use of space if they operate in urban areas, plus the car park may be decorated to promote the brand. For instance at the

Autostadt The Autostadt ( German for ''Automobile City'') is a visitor attraction adjacent to the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, Germany, with a prime focus on automobiles. The complex was designed by Henn GmbH. It features a museum, feature pavilio ...

there are two 60 meter/200 ft tall glass silos (AutoTürme) used as storage for new Volkswagens. The two towers are connected to the Volkswagen factory by a 700-metre tunnel. When cars arrive at the towers they are carried up at a speed of 1.5 metres per second. The render for the Autostadt shows 6 towers. When purchasing a car from Volkswagen (the main brand only, not the sub-brands) in select European countries, it is optional if the customer wants it delivered to the dealership where it was bought or if the customer wants to travel to Autostadt to pick it up. If the latter is chosen, the Autostadt supplies the customer with free entrance, meal tickets and a variety of events building up to the point where the customer can follow on screen as the automatic elevator picks up the selected car in one of the silos. The car is then transported out to the customer without having driven a single meter, and the odometer is thus on "0". Automated car parks have been popular for multistory residential buildings in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

and

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. In

, automated car parks are gradually catching in the downtown core condominium developments sine the 2010s, due to developers having to meet city-mandated minimum parking space requirements while building on increasingly smaller lots.

Other technologies

Modern car parks utilize a variety of technologies to help motorists find unoccupied parking spaces, car location when returning to the vehicle and improve their experience. These include adaptive lighting, sensors and

parking space LED indicator Parking is the act of stopping and disengaging a vehicle and leaving it unoccupied. Parking on one or both sides of a road is often permitted, though sometimes with restrictions. Some buildings have parking facilities for use of the buildings' ...

s (red for occupied, green for available and blue is reserved for the disabled; above every parking space),

indoor positioning system An indoor positioning system (IPS) is a network of devices used to locate people or objects where GPS and other satellite technologies lack precision or fail entirely, such as inside multistory buildings, airports, alleys, parking garages, and un ...

(IPS), including

QR code A QR code (an initialism for quick response code) is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) invented in 1994 by the Japanese company Denso Wave. A barcode is a machine-readable optical label that can contain information about th ...

, and

mobile payment A mobile payment, also referred to as mobile money, mobile money transfer and mobile wallet, is any of various payment processing services operated under financial regulations and performed from or via a mobile device, as the cardinal class of ...

options. The Santa Monica Place shopping mall in California has cameras on each stall that can help count the lot occupancy and find lost cars. Online booking technology service providers have been created to help drivers find long-term parking in an automated manner, while also providing significant savings for those who book parking spaces ahead of time. They use real-time inventory management checking technology to display car parks with availability, sorted by price and distance from the airport. Other recent developments in technology include Vehicles Detection and Count Systems, Point of Sale & Revenue Control Systems, Traffic & Capacity Monitoring Systems, Valet Parking Point of Sale, Management & Revenue Control Systems. These systems help in way finding for parking clients with space availability shown at every turn, space monitoring using retrofit wifi transmitters in each space to update the space availability signs and to alert parking management of bottle necks and intervention measures. Revenue Control, Capacity Management, and Valet Point of Sale is a major issue for Office and Retail parking management and is also a means of parking management intervention, where website update the status of all of these issues for exclusive use by management. Irvine Spectrum Center, Irvine CA, with 3 parking structures, uses all of these systems The City of Santa Monica uses Traffic and Capacity Monitoring with its 30 parking structures. Disneyland, in Anaheim CA uses most of these Hitech solutions on its 8 garages.

Multistory parking ship

In 1991, a 1975 marine vessel was transformed into a floating pontoon multi-storey car parking facility. The ship was given the new name P-Arken (a pun on the words '' park'' and ''

ark Ark or ARK may refer to: Biblical narratives and religion Hebrew word ''teva'' * Noah's Ark, a massive vessel said to have been built to save the world's animals from a flood * Ark of bulrushes, the boat of the infant Moses Hebrew ''aron'' * ...

'') and it is permanently towed in Gothenburgs harbour

Lilla Bommen Lilla Bommen is a part of Gothenburg harbor used for visiting boats and also the name given to the land surrounding the harbor. The eponymous building along with The Göteborg Opera house and the barque Viking are all located at Lilla Bommen. ...

near

Skeppsbron Skeppsbron (Swedish: "The Ship's Bridge") is both a street and a quay in Gamla stan, the old town of Stockholm, capital of Sweden, stretching from the bridge Strömbron in front of the Royal Palace southward to Slussen. The quay Skeppsbrokajen ru ...

. In November 2019, a fully-clad parking barge for automobiles was patented in the United States. Its angular sides are designed to protect against driving wind, rain, and debris.

Education and research

In October 2009, the National Building Museum opened an exhibition solely devoted to the study of 'parking garages' and their impact on the built environment. This exhibition, titled ''House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage'', was on view until 11 July 2010. Additional information on the design and building of parking structures can be found in "Parking Structures: planning, design, construction, maintenance, and repair" This resource is on its third edition, written by prominent staff of Walker Parking Consultants, a preeminent Parking Structure designer in the US.

References

External links

* *
"Robotic Parking Garage: No Tip Necessary "
{{Authority control Garages (parking) Structural system Parking Indoor positioning system