Earthblog

For most commuters, parking just adds to the daily grind.

And it doesn’t get easier for those who park in indoor lots, with their confusing signage, exhaust fumes and often cramped spaces.

Enter Neil Richardson of Heritage Property Corp., Calgary’s ticket to the world of automated parking that will see the city join the likes of New York, Dubai and Tokyo in the art of auto storage.

“The system is a unique application for Canada,” says Richardson, whose proposed structure, developed by Seventh Avenue Autopark, will be the first of its kind in the country.

“If I’m going to build a parkade,” says Richardson, “Then I might as well build one that has a smaller footprint, uses less construction materials, and is better for the environment.”

The fully automated parking facility, using a computerized system that operates a network of rails and pallets to handle cars, is slated for completion by late 2012.

Using 40 per cent less ground space than a traditional parkade, the automated structure will be equivalent to a six-storey office building, and will sit atop the heritage buildings on Seventh Avenue S.W. in downtown Calgary.

After drivers park their vehicles in a stall on street level and swipe their access cards, the system lifts the car into the tower, placing it into one of the 360 available parking slots.

Upon the owner’s return, the access card is swiped for retrieval and the car is delivered to the stall, front facing the street.

This illustration shows how Seventh Avenue Autopark will operate once completed.

photo credit: Automotion Parking

As per Automotion Parking Inc., the building supplier for Seventh Avenue Autopark, parking will increase by up to 100 per cent by sliding cars closer together, maximizing space that would normally be lost because of driving lanes and structural columns.

Effectively delivering a car to its owner within two minutes, there is no human intervention: vehicles can never be touched, scratched, dinged or stolen.

And best of all, there is no tipping the valet guy.

The cost of coming up in the world

Though the project is set to cost more than a traditional parking facility, Richardson says the automated structure will have benefits to the community as a whole.

For him, such a project is critical to a growing city landscape, particularly in Calgary where urban sprawl is an issue.

“Calgary is the second most expensive place to park in North America, second only to New York,” he adds, referring to the Colliers International Global Parking Survey released in June 2009. “Parking is expensive because the city has a policy that restricts the ability to build parking downtown, which, in turn, creates an artificial restriction on the supply.”

In the international report, Calgary was found to charge a whopping $460 a month on parking, more than twice the national median monthly rate of $222.75.

According to Joe Binfet, managing director from the Calgary office of Colliers International, from a previous interview with the Financial Post: “All of this speaks to the supply issue in Calgary. It’s a combination of the fact that oil companies need to be downtown to conduct business and then there is some reluctance on the part of Calgarians to embrace mass transit.”

For Richardson, “The city has started using [no parking] as a public transit tool: they think if a driver can’t find a place to park downtown, they won’t drive, and they’ll take the bus instead,” he says.

David Parker, writing for The Building Owners and Managers Association in Calgary, says the increasing parking rates and decreasing parking space in the city should be of great concern.

He writes: “The current city parking policy coupled with our growth has caused the problems and I see no relief in sight. Today we have a very vibrant downtown core. Parking problems are bound to hurt it as more companies decide to move out. Less parking makes it difficult to lease space.”

With more and more parking spaces disappearing, Richardson’s automated parking complex is beginning to look more and more like a saving grace.

“If you decided that we needed parking in order to survive as a civilization,” says Richardson, “then [our survival] would probably be dependent on automated parking structures in the city.”

An artistic rendering of what the Seventh Avenue heritage block will look like after the project is completed.
Photo credit: Heritage Property Corp.

The public transit scare

In a recent 2010 Centre City Citizen Perception Survey led by The City of Calgary’s Business Market and Research division, it was found that only 45 per cent of Calgarians working in the city centre from home choose transit, walking, or cycling as their primary form of transportation, while 55 per cent depended on their personal vehicles.

As per a 2008 report on Calgary’s vital signs from The Calgary Foundation, the city saw the addition of 144,629 registered motor vehicles to the streets, compared to an increase in population of only 116,505 people.

Robotic parking garage at the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg, Germany

Photo credit: Volkswagen

Recently, a string of vandalism shook some downtown Calgary residents after they discovered that some cars in their parking garage were broken into during the night.

Considering the parking garage was securely locked, many residents questioned how intruders could have gained access.

For Richardson, an automated parking structure would not pose a problem like this, since “the vehicles can’t get damaged once they’re inside the tower.”

It is also environmentally friendly, “it’s electricity based,” he says. “Once you’ve parked your car, everything is electronic…there are no exhaust fumes, which should reduce some greenhouse gas emissions.”

“Plus,” he adds, “the system isn’t ventilated or even lit up like a normal enclosed parkade.”

Parking lot as environmental vandal

A survey prepared by C5 Plus Ltd. – a group of scientists for Health, Safety and Environmental Consultants to tenants of modern office buildings in Calgary – found that a typical vehicle travelling  from home to a parking stall downtown on a daily basis has a median contribution of as much as 8.66 tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per year.

A typical downtown Calgary office building, while providing light, heat and power, produces approximately 13,000 tonnes of GHG per year.

Small changes to parking structures – like installing more energy efficient lighting, or getting rid of lighting completely – could approximately reduce 380 tonnes of GHG equivalent to that of 38 Ford Explorers.

“At the end of the day,” says Richardson, “the automated system is less than the total power produced by a traditional parkade.”

And what if the system were to fail?

Because the automated parkade is based on electricity, there will be backup generators that will take over instantly, “in case of a power failure,” Richardson says.

The system will also be remotely monitored, in case a driver were to lose their access card.

“It would be no different as if you lost your vehicle in a regular parkade,” Richardson says. As long as the driver can describe and prove his car to the station attendant, the attendant can track it by scanning photos of the car taken upon entry to identity the right one.

And if anyone is left inside the car while it is being stored in the tower, the parking system won’t operate because the garage will be equipped with motion detectors.

Even though completion is still a long ways away, Richardson expects the project to create a buzz for the area and for the technology.