What does Fully-Automated Parking mean?
At Parkworks we specialize in design and installation of the world’s highest quality, most dependable fully-automated parking systems. A reasonable question might be, “What is Fully-Automated Parking?”
Automated Parking System (APS) technology has been around for quite some time. Semi-automated parking systems — where the driver or a valet parks the car — can be traced back to Paris in 1905 at the Garage Rue de Ponthieu, where an elevator was used to transport cars to multiple levels, then parked by valets. The first fully-automated system — where no humans are involved with parking the car — was installed in Washington D.C. in 1951. Since then, Europe and Asia have seen many installations, while the United States, especially the West Coast, has lagged behind.
But lag no more! Parkworks focuses solely on the Western United States, because major West Coast cities are rapidly discovering the benefits of APS Solutions. A full list of benefits is the subject of our next article, but one stands out for any urban planner or developer: Twice the car count in the same amount of space.
We are installing the first fully-automated parking garage for Spire by Laconia, a new 41-story condominium development in downtown Seattle. Nine floors of quiet, clean underground parking in a small triangular footprint, with a capacity of 266 cars.
We are installing a fully-automated system for Platform III by Runyon Group, a new office building in Culver City, Los Angeles County. In this case, given the building’s footprint, only 3 underground stories are required to park 210 cars.
Fully-Automated parking means much less time and hassle for the driver. The driver pulls up to the APS, turns off the car, and the APS does the rest. Cars are parked by the system cleanly, quietly and safely. The systems installed by Parkworks are fully electric, which eliminates the noxious emissions involved with standard parking. But we are getting ahead of ourselves — look to our next article for a full list of benefits, for both developers and car owners.
Parkworks: The Future of Parking.