Anyone who’s tried to find a premium parking space in an inner city will tell you that it can be a frustrating mess. Arrive at your destination at the wrong time, and you're left to circle the streets, around and around again, getting more and more exasperated. Once you finally give in and decide to settle for a paid car park, it’s not unusual to discover all the best ones are already full.
City business owners and retail stores know that finding viable ways to get customers closer to their products and services has always been a problem. Even in smaller towns across Australia, population growth has seen traffic congestion, parking limitations and car theft skyrocket. Little wonder then that people are turning to technology to solve the problem.
There’s more need for safe, affordable, reliable and effective vehicle parking systems than ever. That’s why multilevel parking systems are firmly on the radar of town planners, developers and homeowners across the country – as the price of inner-city land rises steeply, stakeholders are looking to newly affordable, original and practical automation technologies to pave the way for a new kind of car storage system.
Car stackers are a creative and intelligent solution, using computers and engineering to deliver opportunities to maximise available space for parking in our increasingly expanding urban areas. Now a familiar fixture in crowded global cities like Japan, France, and London, Australian developers and councils are now seeing the wisdom in allowing cars to be parked directly above each other when space is at a premium.
Vehicle parking systems are the perfect solution when developers need to fit enough cars into a small space to comply with council planning guidelines and ensure their masterplan remains viable. They’re a simple solution for a worldwide problem.
Homeowners with up to three cars, only a single car space on their land and little off-street parking are installing car stackers in underground car parks beneath their existing front yards or garages, sometimes combined with a car turntable to allow easier access in tight driveways. This reduces their vulnerability to theft, vandalism and accidental damage when compared to parking on the street. It also boosts the value of their property by making it more desirable.
Multilevel parking systems are a boon for classic car collectors who want to keep their investments safe and unblemished without needing a hanger to store them. But the most popular application for multilevel parking systems is in sizeable inner-city car parks, where automation and computer-controlled systems mean as much as double the number of cars can be stored on the same site as a conventional car park with ramps and relatively larger spaces to manoeuvre in and out.
Car stackers also make it easier for companies and retail owners to attract more customers by offering easy to access car parking closer to their business. Car stacks can be installed above or below ground, giving businesses their own exclusive parking area, and allowing customers to shop where parking is most accessible.
The next step in automated parking promises even more. As robotic systems become cheaper to produce, we’ll start seeing robots moving and sliding cars effortlessly into minuscule spaces, allowing us to go about our business without the nightmare of parking.