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 […]
LAX reduces supply, increases prices
Los Angeles International Airport, the first port of call for almost every Australian travelling to the US, announced on December 31 that they would be closing the cheapest of their three parking lots (Parking Lot B) and converting it to employee parking only. Management claims that this change represents an effort to consolidate their parking […]
Parking fines determined by your income
Following on from previous posts on increases in parking fine revenues for Brisbane City Council and the ongoing battles at Balmoral, we have come across a very interesting development in Europe. Everything-Green website TreeHugger has drawn to our attention to the concept of tying speeding fines (and parking fines!) to the offending driver’s income. This […]
Book your car park days before you fly!
New Zealand’s Wellington Airport has just introduced an online car park booking service, offering customers the ability to pre-book their space long before arriving at the airport. The benefits for the customer include not just knowing that their car space is reserved, but also that a discount is available, supporting corporate travelers seeking the ‘best […]
A philosopher’s point of view
A guest article from the desk of PCI’s Managing Partner Cristina Lynn. During the Christmas break I was browsing in a bookshop and came across a small book titled “A week at the Airport – A Heathrow Diary” written by the controversial philosopher Alain de Botton. Having spent a significant part of my working days […]
How much does it cost to build a car park around the world?
Davis Langdon has published the twelfth edition of its Blue Book, a comprehensive document covering a wide range of topics related to the property and construction industry including the very important issue of sustainability in new and refurbished buildings. We found in it an interesting comparative table showing the cost of building multi storey car […]
Airport “mobile phone waiting lots”
The Age recently published an article drawing attention to an innovation being introduced at US airports: the mobile phone waiting lot. Since 2004, an increasing number of US airports have incorporated a free of charge area where family and friends picking up arriving passengers can wait in the relative safety and comfort of their cars. […]
2009 Wrap Up
This is our last blog update for 2009, and as such I wanted to take this opportunity to wish you, on behalf of the whole PCI team, a very Merry Christmas and all the best in 2010. It’s been quite a year, I am sure you will all agree. We have seen significant consolidation in […]
Middle East Parking Conference videos
Parking World magazine have now published the first three of several video interviews captured during the Middle East Parking Conference held in Abu Dhabi last month. Declan Ryan, CEO of Database Consultants, Australia, spoke on vehicle detection technology, focusing on the quality of the information into a working practice in a city development. Tim Haahs […]
Davis Langdon Construction Sentiment Monitor December 2009
Davis Langton have just released their December 2009 Construction Sentiment Monitor report. The 2009 reports have seen growing positive attitudes and the December issue continues this trend. The report illustrates the following key findings: Costs return to top three problems Planning pressures easing Finance – greatest problem Sentiment continues to improve You can view the […]
Singapore’s green mall car parks
We’ve been reading up on the ‘Green Mark’ awards in Singapore, launched by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) in January 2005 to promote environmental awareness in the construction and real estate sectors. It is a benchmarking scheme that aims to achieve a sustainable built environment by incorporating best practices in environmental design and construction, […]
Black Friday: shopping responsibly
Last week, PCI blogged about Parking ‘Black Friday’ – Thanksgiving Friday in the US, and one of the busiest parking days of the year due to the number of shoppers looking to pick up holiday bargains. An initiative called ‘Buy Nothing Day’ has recently emerged in the US to coincide with one of the busiest […]
How did car parks come about? See the House of Cars exhibition
Currently underway in the National Building Museum in Washington, the ‘House of Cars’ exhibition is gathering positive press from the industry. As read in the National Parking Association’s website (presenting sponsor of the event): House of Cars is the first exhibition of its kind to explore parking garages and the parking industry. It presents the history […]
Parking ‘Black Friday’
As thanksgiving approaches in the US, parking operators are bracing for ‘Black Friday’ – one of the busiest parking days of the year. As shoppers venture out to do their holiday shopping, filling their vehicles with turkey and holiday festive stuffings, and families fly around the country to reunite with loved ones, airport and shopping […]
Car sharing as an example of post-capitalist cultural change
This week we came across an excerpt from an essay written by Catherine Marie Simpson on car sharing – Cars, Climates and Subjectivity: Car Sharing and Resisting Hegemonic Automobile Culture? – exploring the concept of a group of people owning one vehicle and sharing the usage collectively. We briefly touched on some of the digital […]
China will be the world’s largest car buyer in 2009
This article is republished in full from the Parking World (magazine) newsletter with the kind permission of Parking World. So where will these cars park? Monthly sales jumped nearly 80% year-on-year to 923,154 units in October 2009. China Passenger Association reported that in the first 10 months of 2009, sales of cars, sports-utility vehicles, minivans […]
Car Sharing – the old fashioned way
At the recent University Workshop I attended in Perth, one of the presentations addressed the issue of car sharing as a means to reduce the number of vehicles requiring parking on campuses. We were informed that there are web based systems on offer which act as a kind of “RSVP” matching service allowing people travelling […]
Parking Guidance Systems
Cristina Lynn recently attended the 2nd Middle East Parking Conference held in Abu Dhabi where she delivered a paper on Parking Guidance Systems. Sensor-ship, why individual bay sensors provide the ultimate in car park management, explores the underlying customer service expectations, the technology driving the systems, and illustrates the benefits of a Parking Guidance System […]
The people have spoken: show us where to park!
These are just some of the comments we received from people using the car park: “It’s great. We should have more car parks like this” “Drove straight in, looked for the green light, parked. Perfect!” “Love it!” If you’re interested in discussing Parking Guidance Systems, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Tertiary Parking Management Workshop
The first Tertiary Parking Management Workshop was held on 28 and 29 October in Perth at Curtin University’s Graduate School of Business. The event, organized and hosted by the Parking Association of Australia, provided a forum for parking professionals from a number of tertiary institutions around Australia to exchange ideas and experiences with regard to […]
The Price of Parking at Airports
Cristina Lynn recently attended the 2009 Australasian Airports Landside Transport Conference (AALTC) in Townsville, Queensland, where she spoke on the topic of airport parking charges. Her presentation explores the economics of parking at airports, both in Australia and internationally, with data and examples of how pricing should be determined as well as a global comparison […]
Cars being rude to pedestrians in New York City
New York City at the moment is undergoing an urban planning evolution project, called ‘livable streets’. However, just because there’s an evolution underway doesn’t mean that drivers have gotten the message. Cars blocking crosswalks, drivers failing to yield to pedestrians, unnecessary honking and a slew of other quality-of-walking violations are still a routine occurrence on […]
The people vs the parking police – part two
In Logan City (USA) a recent council decision to replace the on-street parking strips with park-strips (small strips of park and greenery to improve aesthetics) has resulted in… a lawsuit. Residents of the area argue that the City initiated the park-strip project too quickly, and feel that the actions are outside their authority, invoking the […]
Oxford “Scramble” Circus
Courtesy of TreeHugger, we found this interesting article on the redesign of the pedestrian crossing at Oxford Circus in London, one of the busiest street crossings in the city. Modeled on the Japanese ‘scramble crossing’ design, as used in Shibuya station in central Toyko, the new design allows pedestrians thirty seconds to cross the intersection […]
Toyota designs a font using a car
This is a great idea for our more arty followers out there. Toyota has teamed up with two typographers and a race car driver to develop a font using only a car! The font is called IQ – the pictures tell a great story, but if you really want to be blown away, view the […]
Parking World magazine – October issue
The October issue of Parking World magazine is now out, and focuses on Airport Parking and Technology. There are a few mentions of PCI in this month’s issue, including the announcement of Kathy Ross’ appointment to PCI, and Cristina Lynn’s article about Sydney’s traffic challenge in the future, called Traffic Congestion – Sydney’s Paradigm Paralysis. […]
Middle East Parking Conference
PCI will be participating at the Second Middle East Parking Conference to be held in Abu Dhabi between 9 and 11 November 2009. The three day event will be action packed, with high calibre presentations from such industry representatives as Timothy Haahs, Barbara Chance, Mary Smith, Peter Guest and a whole lot more. The three […]
Sydney’s traffic solutions?
With Sydney’s population forecast to reach 10 million by 2050, drastic measures with regard to urban and transportation planning are likely to be required for the city to be able to cope with the demands placed on its services and infrastructure. The Sydney Morning Herald has been championing this cause of late, setting up independent […]
Traffic Congestion – Sydney’s Paradigm Paralysis
On returning from my overseas trip in July of this year I came across an article published in the (sydney) magazine entitled “I have a dream” which explored four different experts’ points of view regarding the state of our city: where did we go wrong and where do we go from here? This was quite […]
Melbourne developers push for reduced residential parking requirements
The City of Melbourne is currently considering a proposed amendment to the residential parking requirements for new developments in some central Melbourne districts. Under the proposed amendments, new apartment buildings constructed in these areas will not be required to provide any minimum number of parking spaces per dwelling. The Australian Financial Review reported on October […]