Parking World

The Not-So-Great Wall of China

It was all over in 30 seconds. A nearly-complete 13-story apartment building in Shanghai China fell over in June, while remaining basically intact. The worst part is that a construction worker was killed, raising concerns about China's construction standards. Seven people in charge of the construction were arrested for causing a major accident.

The building, located in Shanghai's southwestern Minhang district, fell after the ground gave way on one side of the building, due to excavation of an underground parking garage. My personal recommendation is to always build the underground garage first, before constructing the building above it.

Parking World recently reported that China will be the largest car buyer in 2009. The China Passenger Association predicts full-year auto sales will grow by 44% over last year – to 13.5 million – making China the world's largest auto market. More cars will inevitably lead to more parking infrastructure, which could be a huge potential problem because China's construction industry has been gaining a reputation for poor quality and materials.

A picture says a thousand words, and in this case some of those words are: construction regulations must be improved in this rapidly growing economy. Some of the other words are probably expletives uttered by the unfortunate people who planned to reside in this building.

 

 

Pete Goldin

City Having A “Bad” Christmas

Litchfield in Staffordshire England is going to have a bad Christmas. With just over two weeks to go to Christmas the Borough has announced the emergency closure of its main town centre multi-storey car park after an engineer's inspection declared the building unsafe. At the peak of the year's shopping activity the town has lost a large part of its parking. Council Leader David Smith, said: "With Christmas shopping in full swing, it is a really unfortunate time of year to close one of our main city car parks. However, our primary concern has to be people's safety. Because of this, we have had no choice but to close the multi-storey".

I a burst of what I would have thought was totally unfounded optimism a council spokesman confirmed that the closure may only be temporary; presumably they have self healing concrete in Litchfield? I remember when the late great Sam Bhuyan of Walker Parking looked at the UK parking scene he became incredibly frustrated at how short-sighted many UK municipalities were when they looked at asset protection concepts. Car parks made money but there was seldom any plan to invest some of that money back into keeping the car park in good condition. Now I don't know what the situation is in Litchfield but if I were a betting man…

Peter Guest

Only in England.

They say that you don't have to be mad to live here but it helps. A fine example of English eccentricity has just come on the market for anyone with about $1.5m plus to spare. In 1769 George III enacted legislation for the Earl of Abingdon to build a toll bridge across the Thames, at Swinton near Oxford, with a ban on any other bridges within three miles either way. The Earl ran a ferry but did a deal whereby, in return for building a stone bridge, parliament enacted a law giving the tax-free income from the tolls to him, his "heirs and assigns" for ever.

Some 240 years later; about 10,000 cars a day cross the bridge and although they only pay about 8 cents toll the income each year is about $300,000 tax free. Annual running and maintenance costs are about half of this, the rest is money in the bank. To some this is an example of what makes England England, for the locals queuing to pay their 5p each day, it's a pain in the ass and they want the anachronism done away with. The 5p toll is set by government. The bridge has been sold for just over £1m which gives the purchaser about 10% return on their investment tax free, not bad.

Peter Guest

CPTED Lighting the Way to Safer Car Parks

CPTED is gaining an increasing influence on parking lot design around the world. (CPTED is Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, and is pronounced "sep-ted"). For example, Auckland and other cities in New Zealand are basing their CARPARK+ Safer Parking initiative on CPTED.

The Canada-based International CPTED Association (ICA) defines CPTED as a multi-disciplinary approach to deterring criminal behavior through environmental design. According to ICA, CPTED strategies rely upon the ability to influence offender decisions that precede criminal acts by affecting the built, social and administrative environment.

When I first heard about CPTED, I assumed it was simply about making car parks brighter, with less hiding spaces for criminals and more CCTV cameras. Barry Davidson, Executive Director for ICA, assured me that CPTED is much more. Lighting, for example, is an important aspect of CPTED, but it is not as simple as I thought.

"We look at lighting very carefully, on a human scale," Davidson says, pointing out that the psychology of the design is a critical component of CPTED, intended to influence the behavior of criminals, but also improve the comfort of the car park patrons. "For example, most people are comfortable if they can identify someone walking towards them from 20-30 feet away. However, a lot of lighting is set so high that everything is in shadow, so you could see a body coming toward you but you don't have any kind of comfort level because you cannot identify them."

Davidson says the type of lighting can be a vital factor, in relation to a specific environment.

"In an inner city, high crime area, for example, we might use high-pressure sodium or some other type of light that washes out the color of skin," he explains. "Needle users can't see a vein, so they are not going to go there to shoot up. We have used that approach quite successfully."

With car parks constantly portrayed as dark and dangerous scenes of the crime in the media, CPTED could go a long way toward changing that perception.

 

The Cart Before the Horse

My last two blogs, posted on November 24, covered the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) of Mumbai, which is building seven underground garages. I mentioned that I like the business model as a concept, but I also noted that the public is not going to use the car parks if there is free parking available on the streets of Mumbai.

One thing that keeps bothering me about this: why is the BMC spending the money to build car parks, and ignoring the underlying problem that will ultimately undo any positive impact of the car parks? The bottom line is that the underground garages will not solve Mumbai's serious parking problem, unless the Mumbai authorities first put an end to the free-yet-illegal street parking. It seems that they are putting the cart before the horse.

Is the BMC unaware of this problem or are they simply ignoring it? Ashok Datar, founder and chairman of Mumbai Environmental Social Network points out that it is a complicated social issue that the BMC may be avoiding.

"They will have to worry about issues of governance, policing, marking and mass scale fining to people belonging to upper classes – which is not done," Datar notes. He also notes that expensive car park construction projects are appealing to the people who are making money, such as high-priced international consultants. "When more money is to be spent, everybody is happy," Datar says. "I am not insinuating, but I can't find any other answer."

Datar explains that if the BMC would only examine the usage of car park projects built for the Inox Cinemas and Warden Road in Mumbai, they would see proof that the public opts for free street parking over pay parking lots.

"Isn't it tragic that they don't know – or pretend not to know – the current usage of such high-cost projects such as Inox and at Warden Road before pushing for very large investment projects based on the same or similar business model?"

Free Parking is in our Genes

In his excellent blog below, Pete quotes Ashok Datar who says building off street parking won't work if people can park for free on street. He channels Don Shoup almost word for word.

In India, as in the US and Europe, that "birthright" of free parking is ever present. I always joked that it was in the governing documents of a country, whether a constitution. the Magna Carta, or the treaty of Lisbon. However Pete's post has had me rethink that position. It must be in the Human Genome.

JVH

Is Free Parking a Birth Right?

In a recent blog, I reported on the new approach by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) of Mumbai to build seven underground parking lots, and let the contractors maintain the lots and keep the revenue for 30 years. In the blog I made it clear that I support this approach in theory, however, I should mention that there remains one major barrier to success.

"A lot of people are opposing this model, as car owners won't use such a facility unless the policing and rules are strict – which nobody believes the Mumbai government has the guts to do," says Ashok Datar, founder and chairman of Mumbai Environmental Social Network, who points out that the cost of the initial construction of the seven proposed underground car parks will be borne by the public. Understandably, the public is not going to support funding the construction of car parks that nobody is going to use.

"People don't use such high cost parking islands when elsewhere one can park free or at a low rate," Datar says. "People think that free parking is their birth right."

It is a matter of supply and demand, and as long as free street parking is available in Mumbai, even though it may be illegal, most drivers will choose the free parking if the enforcement is not there. The new underground lots will be empty, and will not help alleviate the city's serious parking problems.

"In a highly congested city like Mumbai, there should be very few areas in the city where free parking should be possible or permitted on road," Datar explains. "To improve the compliance, we need to supplement the system of ticket fixing on the car, advising direct payment of fine – ranging from 300 to 1000 rupees – through the use of IT in a dedicated bank account. This will reduce corruption and towing, and increase the chances of getting caught several times. This will be a perfect deterrent."

"Substantially reducing free parking and making users of road space pay a fair price will automatically encourage good behavior," Datar concludes.

Pete Goldin

Automated Garages

The number of garages of this type is creeping up. According to consultant who knows about these things there are eight of them currently running and six under construction. We have a complete story and list in our upcoming PT edition that will be delivered in January.

Those numbers aren't too shabby considering that except for two, they have virtually all been delivered in the last two or three years.

There will be a sidebar on that story about the automated garages finished and under construction in the United Arab Emirates. There is one finished and two or three more in various stages of completion.

JVH

Dubai to Convert Parking Lots to Grass

Read all about it here. The folks in this second of the Emirates want to go green, literally. They are planning to take all the parking surface lots in the city and cover them with grass. I wish them all the luck. They will need it.

Not to be completely negative on the subject, but my experience, somewhat limited I agree, tells me that this is a gargantuan task. It will require a lot of engineering, replacement of topsoil, grading, reinforcement, fertilizer, cutting, and the like. Of course this shouldn't be much of a problem in a country where they build islands in the shape of palm trees and have the tallest building in the world.

However, I wonder at an alternative. Why not plant trees? They would take less water and maintenance, provide the "green" feel the city is chasing and more importantly SHADE to help in those 50c (140F) summers.

There is something else. Those Bentleys, Ferraris and Rolls Royces have a lot of torque. That power on the rear tires has a tendency to tear at the pavement. What will they do to grass, even the reinforced variety?

JVH

Mumbai Going Underground

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) of Mumbai, India, is pioneering a radical business model for car parks that it hopes will rapidly increase parking capacity in the region – however the new concept is being met with some push back by civic authorities.

This summer, BMC unveiled plans to build seven underground multi-level parking lots in south Mumbai – which would double existing capacity in the area from 700 to 1,400 spaces. The underground parking is meant to replace current above-ground car parks, making more room for traffic and pedestrians in this commercial center.

"The cost of building – which works out to over 2.5 million rupees per space – will be entirely borne by BMC," explains Ashok Datar, founder and chairman of Mumbai Environmental Social Network, who was also consulted by BMC for the underground car parks. "Then the operators will charge the rates - about 15 rupees per hour - to cover only operating costs."

The Mumbai civic standing committee has attempted to block progress on the underground car parks several times. It all comes down to the contractors, which the committee believes have been chosen unfairly. What seems to bother the committee most, however, is the BMC's unorthodox business model for the car parks, which will allow the contractors who build and maintain the lots to keep the revenue for 30 years. After this period, the lots will revert to BMC ownership at no cost to the BMC.

The BMC counters by pointing out that this is not a scam; it is a way to rapidly increase parking capacity. BMC says it is not economically feasible to maintain the parking lots on its own, so handing the responsibility – and the revenue – over to the contractors may be the only way to get South Mumbai the parking capacity it desperately needs today.

In a blog in August and a full article in the October-November issue of Parking World, I covered some of the challenges of parking in India, and specifically in Mumbai. This city needs to take some new approaches to solving its extensive parking problems, and unless corruption can be proven with regard to these specific projects, the BMC should be given freedom to experiment with non-traditional economic models that work.

 

Pete Goldin