FlightCar to alleviate airport parking headaches in San Francisco
Time Business & Money has reported passengers flying into San Francisco now have an alternative when deciding on their rental car choice. An innovative peer-to-peer car-share program is operating out of the international airport. Travellers can choose to leave their car prior to boarding their flight, allowing fellow travellers to use their vehicle while they are […]
Electric cars to have a home at Highland Park, Chicago
The Chicago Tribune has reported Highland Park, a municipality of Chicago, will create areas in its downtown to accommodate electric cars. The city will consider priority parking spaces and reduced vehicle sticker fees to further incentivise electric car owners. The concept is hoped to be not only good for the environment, but also may help […]
Bikes and cars battle for parking in the UAE
It’s confusing times for motorists in U.A.E when it comes to street parking, especially for motorcyclists. A report from Emirates 24 | 7 has highlighted the confusion with stories of misinformation, blatant disregard for the law and officials willing to “turn a blind eye”….. sometimes. So, what’s all the fuss about? Car owners claim that […]
Car sharing in San Francisco seems like a good idea, doesn’t it?
The City of San Francisco prides itself on its Transit First policy, a concept that emerged over 40 years ago to ensure that urban development focused primarily on public transport solutions to tackle the city’s congestion problems. In this vein, two such initiatives have been recently adopted. One was to tighten controls on car park […]
IPI Publishes How to Park: The Must-Read Manual for Teen Drivers
The International Parking Institute (IPI) of which we are a member, has just issued an interesting manual for teen drivers on How to Park. You can read the manual here.
City workers paint handicapped spot around car, then tow it
The UK’s Daily Mail has reported on a truly remarkable story described by the irate victim as “bullying and contempt never seen before.”When Hila Ben Baruch, from Tel Aviv, Israel parked her vehicle outside her home with a parking permit, she had done so legally. By the time Ms Ben Baruch had returned, a handicapped […]
Kunming, China, trials ‘no car day’
The city of Kunming in China (the home town of our analyst Sunny Huang) held its first ever ‘no car day’ recently, with private cars not allowed in the city centre. The event was the climax of Kunming’s ‘Urban Public Transport Week’, promoting the city’s bus system and other alternatives to driving private automobiles around […]
Avis to buy Zipcar car sharing service
Car sharing service Zipcar agreed last week to a sale to Avis Budget Group for about $500 million. The deal puts Avis ahead of its competition in the hourly rental market. According to the Boston Globe, the market for hourly rental in the US has grown to nearly $400 million and could reach $10 billion […]
NYC upgrades parking signs
The New York City Transportation Department announced last week the replacement of more than 6,000 parking signs with an easier-to-follow design. According to the NYTimes, key changes include “more breathing room” (white space), eliminating a colour (blue), and reducing the number of characters needed to explain the rules to a Twitter-friendly 140 (from 250). The […]
Paying for parking by Etag is a reality (in Santiago!)
During our recent visit to the South American capital, we were able to witness the operation of a payment by e-tag in a large shopping centre car park. The system has been recently installed and the owner is expecting that use will increase very fast from a currently low 2% to around 40% of transactions. […]
Denver holiday parking presents
A nice story from Denver in the lead up to the holiday season, where the Denver Public Works decided to hand out 250 vouchers for $5 worth of parking. In a nice twist, the parking officers, whose job is usually to dispense the fines, were tasked with handing out the vouchers.
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, […]
Hola from Santiago
A guest post from Parking & Traffic Consultants’ Managing Partner, Cristina Lynn Hola to all our blog readers! George Burton, Grant McLean and I are in Santiago, Chile to kick start a project for a major shopping centre owner. The project will include design review, signage and wayfinding and external traffic issues. I thought you […]
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 & […]
Highway house comes tumbling down
The Chinese ‘house in the highway’ we reported on last week has finally been bulldozed shortly after the owners accepted a settlement. The five-story house was demolished after its owners, duck farmer Luo Baogen and his wife, agreed to accept compensation of 260,000 yuan ($40,000), according to the Xiayangzhang village chief, Chen Xuecai. According to […]
Weekend-long traffic jam in Russia
Last weekend saw a 125-mile long traffic jam along the main highway between Moscow and St Petersburg which lasted for three days. According to media reports cited by state-run RIA Novosti news, blame for the slow slog goes mainly to bad weather. The traffic headaches began Friday, when up to three feet of snow began […]
The soaring cost of a car park in Hong Kong
Following last week’s article on Mumbai’s car parking prices, it would seem that Hong Kong is also experiencing a similar boom in car parking property prices. Soaring property prices have seen the Hong Kong government introduce measures to cool residential property prices (which jumped 20% in the first nine months of this year), seeing many […]
Interest in electric vehicles is declining In the US
A new study conducted by Pike Research indicates that the number of people ‘extremely’ or ‘very interested’ in electric cars has declined in the last year, from 40% to 36%. According to Torquenews.com, key findings from the survey include: Consumers often cite insufficient range as a primary reason for their lack of interest in plug-in […]
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 […]
Smart paint lights your way on the highway
The Netherlands is introducing a form of ‘smart highway’, featuring glow-in-the-dark tarmac and dynamic paint that warns drivers of weather conditions. The roads will include interactive lighting and an induction priority lane for electric vehicles, with the aim of using light, energy and road signs that automatically adapt to varying traffic conditions. The design and concept […]
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 […]
The case for eliminating disabled parking permits
As we’ve reported before, the abuse of disabled parking permits is widespread across the US (and not just there!). Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, New York and Philadelphia are all reporting problems, with the situation particularly bad in Los Angeles, where a 2010 investigation found disabled passes in 80 per cent of parked cars in a […]
Car sharing: data shows it may be working
The city of Hoboken, New Jersey, introduced a car sharing scheme over two years ago; based on the assumption that they would create parking spaces by taking them away. According to the New York Times, 42 of the city’s roughly 9,000 on-street spaces were allocated to the car sharing program upon inception. Survey data shows […]
The world is on track to be one giant parking lot
A study recently published by Uri Dadush of the Carnegie Endowment proposed a new definition for ‘middle class’: those who own a car. Dadush contends that the number of passenger cars in circulation can be considered a direct measure of the middle class in developing countries. An article on TreeHugger says that if this theory […]
Mayor turns his parking space into a park
A nice story this week that perhaps takes some inspiration from the annual Park(ING) day. The mayor of Ithaca, NY, Svante Myrick, has given up his car to join the estimated 15 percent of the city’s residents who walk to work. According to the Grist List, the mayor is entitled to a reserved parking spot […]
London installs in-street parking sensors
Westminster City Council, in central London, is set to become the first to use in-ground sensor technology to detect whether a car is parked in the space. According to UK’s Telegraph, the three month trial will be run across a number of streets, with plans to roll out the technology to the rest of the West […]
Parking policy and practice – a UK report
A report released in July by the UK’s Royal Automobile Club (RAC) has detailed British parking policy and practice. Called “Spaced Out: Perspectives on parking policy”, the 113 page report offers a huge depth of data on the industry. The report focuses on the demand and supply of parking, with a particular emphasis on the […]
The future of car commuting
We came across a great article this week on The Atlantic Cities, exploring the future of car commuting, and in particular, the development of the ‘road train’ – a semi-autonomous highway platoon that follows the movements of a human-driven lead car. A trial for the road train was conducted in June outside Barcelona, Spain, in […]
Charges for disabled parking in the US
From our vantage point, we see many stories about the misuse of disabled parking permits in the US. This week, we came across the experience in Arlington County, where they have done away with free parking and now charge a uniform fee for all users. According to The Washington Post, the decision was made based […]
Hate to wait: Heathrow pods experienced first hand
Reporting on-location, our London correspondent recently filed a report on the electric pods at Heathrow airport, shuttling passengers from the business car park to Terminal 5 (see also our previous stories on the pods, Pods from the car park at Heathrow Airport, and Heathrow airport pods are now in motion). Some of the key features […]