Parking lots:Who is responsible?
Everyone in this world who drives a vehicle encounters horrible parking lot designs. Who designs these lots? And why are they horrible!? To me it seems like someone who doesn’t drive creates these parking spaces. If i were to create a parking lot design, i would make mock designs with little toy cars to see if it worked correctly. Now when you think of a dreadful parking lot like Hawley Lane in Trumbull it worries me. They are by no means taking advantage of the space allotted. The mere stress of a bad parking lot is that you are constantly thinking ” wow there must be a bunch of accidents here” that is usually a bad sign if you think that. The Stop & Shop near by is awful, i actually hate driving in that lot because i think its horrible.
I wonder if there is a demand for parking lot designers…i googled “parking lot design” and well i didn’t come up with much, just a bunch of random PDFs that meant nothing to me. However, i did come across multiple times on how to calculate how many spaces you need and math formulas to determine how many spaces you needed for the traffic. Which is interesting i suppose but i am no math gal ( its not in my blood). I imagine each state has their own requirements for parking lots. Anywho, the most common design is the boring ol’ rectangle or square ( some sort of standard geometric shape, nothing fancy) with the parking spaces just straight. The spin-off of that is the slanted spaces, which i believe are effective. Where i go to school has slanted spots and i don’t have any problem with it. i think the slanted spots are an effective way to move people in and out of parking areas. The issue that develops with slanted spots are you have to make the rows one way. Which is also better most people get the drift of one ways in a parking lot. I mean there is always that one guy who goes the wrong way…but its pretty rare unless the lot is poorly marked with the huge arrows. Everyone makes mistakes.
There is some thought going into the parking but in some cases not much. In the cases where it doesn’t succeed they fail. maybe i should look into parking lot design…
H
I can’t believe a heated conversation while waiting for the A train became a blog post and what seems like a serious amount of google research.
I don’t know how I came here but yes, there is software (example, autoturn by transoft) for designing vehicle movements from cars to airplanes – you can put your dinky cars away. the slanted spots are nice for old people who can’t drive but real estate is at a premium and that is why your lots are usually not working properly – the goal is to fit as many spots as possible into the available space. usually they are not properly designed for ease of use, just how many cars we can cram in there. Usually if its a mess you can blame the architect. They see the world thru different eyes. I’m currently designing a donut shop drive thru for an existing parking lot and mall, and the problem is that the parking is an afterthought on most applications; they design the building and try to make the parking work around it. The ones that are designed properly are usually obvious, with trees, pedestrian pathways, greenspace, planting, etc, that makes it nice and safe. If its a big rectangle with !@#$^&*’ed up intersections, probably done without much “design”. Oh well, I know that my current design will generate lots of comments like yours, but we are often faced with retrofitting the parking area and you just have to do the best you can with what you are given.
If you want to be a parking lot designer go into civil engineering or “landscape architect”. Its actually interesting work, parking lots only being a very small and often overlooked part of it.
Well i appreciate you answering some questions or at least making sense of it. . I think its funny when you say “usually they are not properly designed for ease of use” because its obviously true. wouldn’t it be easier if it were simpler? Good luck with the donut shop parking lot! and thanks again!