Cycling in London: an entirely different sort of pursuit event
You may be accustomed to reading Lionel Shriver fiction and even seeing some of her more renowned work on the big screen (We need to talk about Kevin). However, she has recently taken up her pen for The Atlantic Magazine to express her personal disappointment with London’s cyclists. She offers an interesting view point, as […]
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 […]
Russian newspaper uses social shaming to stop bad park
An online Russian newspaper ‘The Village’ has launched an app and a media campaign designed to try and stop illegal and inconsiderate parking. Using the app on a mobile phone, the public take photos of the parking offenders, capturing photos of the car and the number plates. Image recognition technology then reads the number plates […]
Car park commercial banned in Australia
A Suzuki Swift Sport ad has been banned in Australia by health and safety authorities, who believe it portrays irresponsible ‘hoon’ driving and linking speeding and dangerous driving with sex appeal. Officials say the ad depicts unsafe driving by showing the car sliding about in a car park, and includes footage of hard acceleration. The […]
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 […]
NFC payments in parking
Near field communication (NFC) technology allows secure data to be transmitted from a device or object to exchange information or even conduct electronic transactions with a tap. The technology is already embedded in many chip credit cards, and mobile phone providers are moving to roll out handsets which are NFC enabled, allowing users to pay […]
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 […]
The new Italian Police Lamborghini
We received an email from an anonymous contributor this week with images from Italy of the new Italian Lamborghini Gallardo Police car. One of two new high-speed patrol cars designed to catch speeding drivers. It seems as though the car met an unfortunate end, although one of our eagle-eyed contributors did point out that the […]
Parking space squatting
An article published in the SMH recently explored what they considered a new phenomenon: parking space ‘squatting’, whereby drivers returning to their cars will sit in the vehicle to use their phones to talk, text or email. On the one hand, it’s upsetting the normal ‘order’ of things – with the driver expected to vacate […]
Music video with amazing intersection animations
Thanks to Andrew Morse, our resident Senior Traffic Engineer, we came across this fantastic music clip, called ‘Got More’, by a band called Eskmo. It’s a stunning animation totally created from footage filmed at a New York intersection. We highly recommend watching through as the animation becomes ever more Escher-like.
Why cyclists are better customers for local businesses
A recent post on the DC Streets Blog examined the economic effects of cycling, and specifically exploring the notion that an investment in cycling infrastructure generally will limit car parking. The article quotes a few numbers, statistics and pieces of information around the economic benefits of the bicycle over the car. We’ve summarised some of the […]
Parking in Miami keeps getting groovier
A new apartment block in Miami has elevators to take residents directly to their units whilst they are sitting in their cars. The $560 million tower is a collaboration between Germany-based Porsche Design Group and a local developer, Gil Dezer. According to the Miami Herald, after the resident pulls over and switches off the engine, […]
Mercedes pushing digital innovation
We have come across two technological innovations this week from auto manufacturer Mercedes that are pushing the boundaries in parking and driving. The first sees the integration of Apple’s voice recognition technology (called ‘Siri’) into their vehicles, allowing users to access their iPhone and applications through voice commands. According to Discovery.com, the system will transfer […]
Shrinkable cars are all the rage
Following last week’s post about MIT’s ‘folding’ Hiriko City Car, scientists have unveiled a similar 2.1m ‘pod’ car that can shrink to fit into tight parking spaces. The car’s length can be reduced by 50 centimetres by the driver for those tight parking spots, and like the Hiriko, it also features wheels that can turn […]
Dynamic on-street pricing overview
We came across a video on the Parking Today site this week that explains how dynamic pricing for on-street meters works. Created by IPS Smart Meters, the company responsible for San Francisco’s SFPark project, the video features contributions from Donald Shoup, John Van Horn and many more. It’s a simple overview of how the technology […]
Where’s my car?
On the topic of snow, we received this photo from our Senior Designer George Burton – it was taken in a town in the south of the Czech Republic. On February 6th it was a balmy 39.40C below zero! Click here to view the image in full size.
France grants cyclists the right to run red lights
Following a nationwide pro-cycling campaign, the French government has issued a decree allowing cyclists in some cities to disregard red lights at certain intersections. Until now cyclists have been subject to the same rules of the road as other vehicles. According to TreeHugger, the newly relaxed road rules for cyclists are now being tested across […]
Melbourne underground car park street art preview
Here is an update on Melbourne’s underground street art project we wrote about recently, as the project has started to take shape. Around 90 artists from New York, Paris, Amsterdam and Melbourne came together to paint over 8,600 square feet of wall space over the 3 levels of Emerald House in South Melbourne. Reminds us […]
Women are better at parking than men, study suggests
Research conducted in Britian has shown that female drivers are better at manoeuvring into a parking space than men. According to the UK’s Telegraph, covert surveillance of car parks across the country has shown that while women may take longer to park, they are more likely to leave their vehicles in the middle of a […]
Beware of doctors driving SUV’s
We came across a great piece written by Kevin Warwood, from Christchurch City Council, who writes the “Parking It There” blog about his recent experience at a New Zealand Hospital: “I was walking along one of the main floors in the Helipad car park building at the very busy Auckland Hospital one Wednesday morning, when […]
Melbourne media agency brings art to their car park
The Melbourne car park of one of Australia’s biggest media agencies, Aegis, is set to undergo a dramatic transformation. Around 90 artists will contribute to what is set to become Australia’s largest exhibition of street art, with the graffiti works painted directly onto the walls of the car park. The contributing artists will hail from […]
Parking a 1951 Cadillac
A great video showing parking innovation and creativity 1950’s style.
The car that stole itself
A car reported as stolen from a car park has turned up seventeen days later – apparently having parked itself perfectly into a nearby garage. The car was discovered when the homeowners returned from holidays and noticed that the door to their shed was awry. It’s believed that the hand-brake had not been properly applied, […]
Parking news review 2011
Another year, another summary. In what has become an annual tradition, we try and distil the key news and trends from the Wayfinding Forum blog. It’s no easy job, with just under 200 posts published every year… Parking rates and sentiment In 2011, Australian parking rates and the construction industry sentiment were inversely proportional. Sydney […]
Ok, I’m selling the Porsche!
A guest blog post from Parking & Traffic Consultants’ Senior Traffic Engineer and resident bicycle enthusiast, Andrew Morse. Well, I would if I owned one and here are two reasons why I would sell mine. Firstly, people who buy exotic cars will justify their purchase because they claim to want exquisite quality and exhilarating […]
Time expired
An oldie but a goodie. This lady always used to say that when she died, she wanted a parking meter on her grave that said ‘expired’. So her family got her one!
Heathrow airport pods are now in motion
According to BAA’s Commercial Press office, the pod system consists of 21 low energy, battery powered, driverless, zero emission vehicles capable of carrying four passengers and their luggage along a dedicated 3.8km guide way. The pods will carry 500,000 passengers each year, giving them a smooth and virtually silent five minute ride. The journey is […]
Cristina is on the move (again)…
The next couple of weeks will be very interesting for Cristina Lynn. She is bound for South America to attend a couple of challenging conferences. First stop is Brazil where a former organiser of the Intertraffic event in The Netherlands started a series of trade events in Sao Paulo, called TranspoQuip. This year, in addition […]
Madame Parking follow up: Parking Hotel Puerta America
As a follow up to our post last week about Madrid’s ‘Madame Parking’, Teresa Sapey, we came across a great video which shows her talking about her recent project for Hotel Puerta America. Teresa talks about how the project came to be, as well as her inspiration for the design of the car park that […]