Italian couple fined for parking car illegally 1803 years ago
An Italian woman suffered shock and dizzy spells and was forced to go to the hospital after receiving a parking fine for 32,000 euros ($42,440). The Repubblica newspaper reported Sicilian police issued the head-spinning fine to the woman earlier this month. The fine was supposed to be dated 2008, but the date was incorrectly entered […]
1111 Lincoln Road Miami continues to impress
This month’s Parking Professional magazine, published by the International Parking Institute, includes a four-page spread on the groundbreaking parking garage at 1111 Lincoln Road, Miami. From our perspective, we are impressed at the way the garage is commanding the attention of the artistic elite in Miami, as a venue for weddings and as an art […]
Innovative garage door opener
A guest contribution from George Burton, our Senior Car Park Designer. Hopefully this video will either inspire you to innovate in your car parks, or at the very least, give you a laugh!
Parking ticket stunt
UK telco T-mobile has capitalised on the emotional distress that a parking ticket can cause to drivers – especially when they don’t think that they deserve it. They’ve come up with a great idea that plays on this and catches more than a few people out! Enjoy.
Construction worker uses bulldozer to move car
A frustrated construction worker put his skills with a bulldozer to good use by delicately removing a vehicle blocking the entrance to his building site. According to Metro.co.uk, Ralf Scherrer from St Gallen, Switzerland, used the massive machine to move a classic Fiat X1/9 sports car illegally parked across the entry to the site. He […]
The future of the LA meter plan?
Following from our previous post, the LA Times Cartoonist Ted Rall has provided his projection of what the future of the dynamic pricing system could have in store. The full cartoon is published below, or you can view on the LA Times site here. Thank you to Donald Shoup for sending this to us this […]
How’s this for a value add service
While recently working on a project in Broken Hill one of our consultants, Kelvin Worthington, spotted this great example of a value add service. While getting your car washed you can have your pooch washed at the same time!
On street parking – Italian style
A guest post from Managing Partner Cristina Lynn You have to love the Italians. Not only are they the G8’s most undisciplined parkers but no one seems to care that much. In Milan the congestion tax has turned the areas surrounding the city centre into gigantic car parks. With on street parking (as well as […]
This is one way to enforce parking rules!
To show that he doesn’t like people parking in bicycle lanes in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius’ mayor has released a video showing him ‘taking matters into his own hands’. The infringement-fighting mayor is shown driving a tank and running over a parked Mercedes, sweeping up the debris and then riding off into the sunset […]
Sydney Tweed Cycle
The number of cyclists on Sydney roads is increasing every day, but this was taken to a new level on the morning of Sunday 30th July when over 150 dapper cyclists took to the CBD streets for the Sydney Tweed Cycle. The event was organised through the Sydney Cyclist website, following the success of similar […]
Driver flips car into parking space
A CCTV camera in a car park caught incredible footage recently of a driver who (presumably accidentally) cartwheeled his Porsche over a wall and into a parking space. The driver was lucky enough to walk away from the vehicle after it flipped 360 degrees landing between two parked cars. Click to watch the video above.
New York to create a pedestrian wayfinding system
This week, New York City’s Department of Transportation announced that they were planning to add signage to the streets to help pedestrians navigate the city more easily. The wayfinding system will provide clear signs that tell people their location, how long it takes to walk to key locations and gives a map of the area. […]
Car park challenge game
We thought we would finish this week’s blog with a little bit of fun. Australian road insurance company NRMA has released a ‘car park challenge’ game for budding iPhone finger parkers. Interestingly, if you scrape or crash your car whilst parking, the damage that you do to you car is able to be estimated, pulling […]
Enforcing New York City’s bike lane laws
Further to the previous article, increased usage of bicycles in New York City has resulted in the New York Police Department now stepping up enforcement of the rules and regulations governing the use of bicycles and the lanes throughout the city. We came across this video this week which highlights some of the challenges that […]
Why aren’t more kids cycling to school?
A recent article was published on The Conversation by Jan Garrard, Senior Lecturer, School of Health & Social Development at Deakin University, posing the question ‘why aren’t more kids cycling to school’. Ms Garrard published some interesting statistics about how car use has changed over the past 40 years, claiming that in 1970, nearly all […]
Parking Consultants: 2010 in review
2010 was an exciting year for us and, although it seems to have flown by, when we look at what we have achieved it looks like at least we were not idle! Working back, we close the year with a new name “Parking & Traffic Consultants” to reflect our additional service offering. As you may […]
Don’t try this in your car park!
One of our European bloggers sent us information on an installation by Swedish artist Gustav Hellberg, who has created an accessible and interactive work of art made up of 24 automatic ABACUS barriers. The barrier arms are raised and lowered randomly by a central control unit, thus constantly opening up and closing down sections within […]
Is Perth the new Melbourne?
On a recent trip to Perth we took the opportunity of visiting the car park under the newly refurbished Condor Tower. Rather than painting the multi level underground car park in the usual regulation grey (or the more unusual bright white) the developer of the site was keen to do something different. And to that […]
It’s not an art installation
Last week, a SAAB parked in a Darlington parking station was the innocent party in a parking mishap. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, it had been simply sitting there, parked, minding its own vehicular business, when it was accidentally rammed by a learner driver in a Toyota Camry, sending it through the boundary brick […]
UK airport parking valet service offers more than just parking
We have come across several articles from the UK in the past week about airport valet parking services hiring out their customers’ cars to tourists and other users whilst overseas. Airport valet parking or ‘meet and greet’ services are becoming increasingly popular with UK customers, with companies picking up the car from the airport, parking […]
The Parking Lot Movie
The trailer for ‘The Parking Lot Movie’ has just come online, following screenings at a number of film festivals around the world. It certainly looks like an interesting take on parking and the ‘American Dream’. From the Parking Lot Movie website; a synopsis of the film: Hailed as the “most feel-good film” of the South […]
A wall of bicycles
For our longer-term subscribers of the PCI blog, you may remember the ‘wall of cars’ we reported in Adelaide (see our post ‘Vertical car park’ here). We think we’ve come across its equal this week – a wall of bicycles in Germany! Over time, the number of bikes has increase as people trade their old […]
PARK(ing) Day 2010
PARK(ing) Day is coming again! This year, PARK(ing) Day is happening on Friday September 17th – all around the world. For those of you unfamiliar with the event, Park(ing) Day is “an annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public places”. “The […]
Adelaide City Council stands firm on parking tickets
To end our weekly post on a lighter note, we came across an article listing a range of excuses to avoid parking fines that have been received by the Adelaide City Council. Being ‘bitten by a wombat’, ‘trapped at the zoo’, or ‘not able to read the parking sign because I am legally blind’ are […]
Other wireless parking applications
This week we have come across two other applications that our readers may be interested in. The first comes from The City of Eugene, in Oregon, US, where a small, free application called “Epark” was developed, which shows all available parking options, both on-street, and off-street, managed by the City administration. It provides information on […]
Lack of wheels not enough to avoid fines
An interesting debate on which our blog has published many examples is whether parking inspectors should follow the letter of the law in carrying out their enforcement duties, or govern with a certain degree of empathy and consideration depending on the circumstances. In July 2009 for example, we published an article called ‘The people vs […]
The biggest winner
Some say England’s permanently jammed M25 (“The London Orbital Car Park”) is the biggest car park in the world. However, Canada’s West Edmonton Shopping Mall, with 20,000 spaces, holds the Guinness World Record for the largest parking lot. Can you tell us which is the biggest free-standing car park in Australia?
Preserving historical architecture
This building is a 17th century condominium in Crema, Northern Italy – the Palazzo Compostella già Dolfin. At first glance it seems perfectly normal, but in fact it hides an underground car park by the brilliant use of hydraulic stacking technology. The end result is a garage that stores 18 cars invisibly underground, with the […]
No understand?
PCI’s roving reporters came across this sign during the week. On face value – it made us laugh, and could well be used by any number of disgruntled community groups to protest against the introduction of on-street parking meters. But, we’d like to get to the bottom of it! The post says it’s from Melbourne, […]
Free Parking!
To spread the word about their Monopoly promotion, McDonalds in Vancouver, Canada, gave away free parking. Literally! They purchased over 1,500 car parks on a given day, meaning that any motorist wishing to park in the nominated car park ‘landed on Free Parking’. A nice idea to promote their campaign, and it received significant press […]