Automated parking system
[1] Parking systems are generally powered by electric motors or hydraulic pumps that move vehicles into a storage position.The paternoster (shown animated at the right) is an example of one of the earliest and most common types of APS.
[4] The “ferris-wheel,” or paternoster system — was created by the Westinghouse Corporation in 1923 and subsequently built in 1932 on Chicago's Monroe Street.
The Nash Motor Company created the first glass-enclosed version of this system for the Chicago Century of Progress Exhibition in 1933[5] The first driverless parking garage opened in 1951 in Washington, D.C., but was replaced with office space due to increasing land values.
However, interest in APS in the U.S. waned due to frequent mechanical problems and long waiting times for patrons to retrieve their cars.
[7] In the United Kingdom, the Auto Stacker opened in 1961 in Woolwich, south east London, but proved equally difficult to operate.
[11] The world's fastest Automated Parking System is in Wolfsburg, Germany, with a retrieval time of 1 minute and 44 seconds.
[17] The systems work well in balanced throughput situations like shopping malls and train stations, but they are unsuited to high peak volume applications like rush hour usage or stadiums[17] and they suffer from technical problems.
More sophisticated fully automated APS will obtain the dimensions of cars on entry in order to place them in the smallest available parking space.
The direct comparison of costs between an APS and a multi-story parking garage can be complicated by many variables such as capacity, land costs, area shape, number and location of entrances and exits, land usage, local codes and regulations, parking fees, location, and aesthetic and environmental requirements.
As evidence of the complexities of comparing the costs for APS and multi-story parking garages, the same author presents an actual case study [21] as follows: In this case study, the APS also provides roughly 7,000 sq ft (650 m2) of additional open space compared to the multi-story parking garage which provides no open space and requires minimum setbacks be utilized.
Other references also indicate that the cost comparison between APS and multi-story parking garages is highly dependent on the application and the detailed design.
