Sydney Convention centre to be upgraded

The NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell announced last month plans to refurbish the convention, exhibition and entertainment precinct in Darling Harbour. The upgrade will see the area boast Australia’s largest convention and exhibition facilities, Sydney’s largest red carpet entertainment venue and a hotel complex of up to 900 rooms. A new urban neighbourhood in Haymarket will […]

Parking and Traffic Consultants – 2012 year in review

2012 has been another eventful year for PTC. Many new clients joined the prestigious names in our portfolio, including Perth Airport, Health Infrastructure, Adelaide University and Leichhardt Council. Many other previous clients engaged us to do new work. Just to give you an idea, during the year we worked for these airports: Adelaide, Gold Coast, […]

Sydney light rail project to be green lit

The first stage of the extension of Sydney’s light rail appears to be moving ahead, with the staged construction of a  line from the University of NSW in Randwick to the CBD expected to be announced this week. NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell will announce that work will start at the university and go to Central […]

A year of ‘Parking and Traffic’ blogs in review

Feel like the year has passed you by too? If you’ve been too busy to stay on top of the parking and traffic industry news every week – never fear! Here is our annual round-up of the highs and lows, and headline-making stories from 2012. Parking and policy in Australia This year saw Parking & […]

Light rail is people’s choice for George Street

A forum at Sydney’s Town Hall on Monday night has endorsed plans for a light rail line down George Street (see our previous post about this here). The forum, attended by around 700 people including business owners and general public, tackled two competing plans before the O’Farrell government: a tram line versus an underground bus […]

Unofficial street photography gallery in Sydney

A ‘guerrilla gallery’ has been installed by photographers on Sydney’s Elizabeth Street, on the wall beneath Goulburn Street Parking station, with more than 40 works by six photographers. Sydney’s Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, has thrown her support behind the project, and will call on Monday night’s council meeting to take all necessary steps to ensure […]

13th Australian Parking Convention is a resounding success

Following in the steps of the November 2010 Convention, the Parking Association of Australia held its 13th event at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre earlier this week. The event was characterised by a high level of local and international speakers that had the delegates particularly riveted to their seats. The exhibiton, in Hall 6 […]

West Hollywood automated parking garage

The City of West Hollywood (LA) engaged technology company Unitronics to design, engineer, fabricate, install and maintain a 200-car automated vehicle storage and retrieval system for the City Hall. This is a $2.6 million project, according to the City’s website. The automated parking system is indeed impressive, with the automated garage able to hold as […]

King of the car park

Lost no more?! More than 500 years since King Richard III was killed in battle, archaeologists believe they have finally found his skeleton buried beneath a council car park. Experts said a fully intact skeleton matched much about what they knew of the medieval king, including his reputation as a “hunchback”, and are hoping that […]

Sydney’s George Street : what does it look like with light rail?

The City of Sydney has put forward a proposal to contribute to the NSW State Government’s light rail project, transforming George Street into a world-class main street. Council has offered to work with the NSW Government by committing $180 million to the light rail project, including funding new pedestrian spaces, new information signage, upgraded public […]

Brisbane airport upgrade officially opened

The upgraded Brisbane Airport Domestic Terminal Precinct was officially opened on August 28. The redevelopment included an expansion to the Central Area Satellite and terminal aprons, construction of a new nine-storey car park, an elevated Skywalk, new forecourt area and central taxi rank, and reconfiguration of the road network in front of the terminal. The […]

Cycle-tecture in urban landscapes

A guest post from our Senior Traffic Consultant, Andrew Morse. Will the bicycle influence our future streetscapes? It’s not such a strange question when considering how the car influenced not only our streets, but our architecture too.  In fact, according to Dr Steven Fleming, Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle, there are architectural […]

Around the country: Australian parking news wrap

A number of short stories we’ve collated in parking and transportation from around Australia over the past few weeks. Adelaide Airport has opened a new multi-level short term car park, providing customers with more efficient parking and a weather-proof link to the terminal. According to Impact Pub, the new short term car park is more […]

Now we know what to do with those old meter posts!

An interesting article appeared in July’s edition of The Parking Professional (official publication of the International Parking Institute) which follows the results of a 2008 competition set up by New York City’s Department of Transportation (DOT) in partnership with the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum for a unique NYC bicycle rack. The objective of the […]

Car Park Façades are making design news!

It seems that some of the more aspirational car park exterior designs around the world are starting to see recognition in the mainstream commercial design world. An article recently published in Commercial Design Trends magazine (see their website at trendsideas.com) explores how car park façades are being used to disguise and shelter car park buildings […]

Australian Parking Convention 2012 – registrations now open

A message from Cristina Lynn, Parking & Traffic Consultants’ Managing Partner.< As you may be aware the biennial convention organised by the Parking Association of Australia will be held on 11 – 13 November 2012 at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre. Similarly to the event held in 2010 the Exhibition will be occupying Hall […]

How much does it cost to design and build a car park?

The most popular article on the Wayfinding Forum we’ve published (in terms of traffic to the article) was regarding the costs of building a car park (view the article, ‘How much does it cost to build a car park‘, here). This week, we came across data on the construction and design of car parks, with […]

Andrew Morse joins Parking and Traffic Consultants partnership

A message from Parking & Traffic Consultants’ Managing Partner, Cristina Lynn I would like to officially welcome Andrew Morse to the Parking & Traffic Consultants partnership. Andrew has cemented his commitment to the business by becoming a partner, demonstrating the success of the implementation of a traffic division within our long established parking consultancy. We […]

Urbanized: A must see for all Urban Designers (real or otherwise!)

Urbanizedis a feature-length documentary about the design and development of cities, which looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers. According to the film’s press release, over half the world’s population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call […]

Ohio State University leases parking operations to QIC

Ohio State University has moved ahead with leasing their parking operations to Australian company QIC and US partner LAZ Parking, in a 50 year contract deal worth US $483 million. According to the Star Tribune, the university pushed the plan as a way of providing cash flow at a time of declining public funding, with […]

Canberra Airport plans to build high-speed rail station

Canberra Airport has unveiled plans to build a A$140 million high-speed rail facility next to its new airport terminal, in a bid to transform the gateway into a multi-modal hub and eliminate the need for a second Sydney airport. According to a federal government study, a high speed rail link between the two cities would […]

Parking news from around Australia

In a quick summary of other news from around the parking and traffic world this week, the press is once again taking aim at airports, this time comparing the cost of parking a car to the cost of parking a plane. The article compares the base rates for parking against each other (finding that it […]

Saga City film on urban planning

This week we came across a film on the website of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute called Saga City. This short film is intended to show how our communities can tackle the challenges of urban planning and vehicle emissions, as well as learning more about the impacts of our current development patterns. The film is […]

Minimum parking to blame for LA’s commercial inefficiency

Thanks to Paul Barter’s Reinventing Parking blog, we came across an article this week that explored how the minimum parking requirements in Los Angeles have had a negative impact on street life and force property owners to use their blocks of land highly inefficiently. For us the clearest representation of how the minimum parking requirements […]

Is there a worldwide parking problem?

Following our recent post on Eran Ben-Joseph’s book, ‘Rethinking a Lot’, The BBC have also picked up on the story. They summarise some of Ben-Joseph’s key recommendations for improving parking lots to make them more ‘environmentally responsible’ and ‘aesthetically pleasing’ as follows: Better design. Citing Miami’s car park as a prime example, drawing on great design […]

Vacuum tube transport system

In one of the stranger articles we’ve come across this week, the concept of the Evacuated Tube Transport system, from design group et3.com, will see 16ft long capsules of humans traveling at around 6,500km/h and around the world in less than six hours. According to The Creators Project, the Evacuated Tube Transport features a range […]

Sydney’s Darling Harbour to be rebuilt..

The NSW government announced last week that the Sydney Entertainment Centre, Convention Centre and Exhibition Centre at Darling Harbour will be closed for three years while they are expanded or replaced under a $1 billion upgrade approved by NSW cabinet. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the precinct will be expanded with a view to […]

Display garages

A new type of garage is on sale from architects EcoSpace which turns the once humble and hidden away parking garage into the centrepiece of your back garden. The modular garage is designed to be a showroom for your car, with features like ambient lighting, floor-to-ceiling glazing and even modular storage systems available. Security is […]

Turning parking lots into better public spaces

The New York Times recently carried an article by Eran Ben-Joseph, a professor of urban planning at MIT and author of ‘Rethinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking’. In it, Ben-Joseph shares his vision for transforming the parking lot into a space beyond simply providing parking availability and convenience. He believes that the […]

Parking for bikes in private car parks in BA

In Buenos Aires, a city where bicycle theft is rampant, the provision of secure parking facilities is almost as important as the supporting infrastructure. The city is currently embracing cycling, under a scheme called “Mejor en Bici”, with a number of laws and construction projects designed to provide several bike parking facilities. Of these laws, […]


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