Cool Car Park no longer an oxymoron

The adjectives and imagery most often associated with the words “car park” would undoubtedly be summarised as “dull”.  Well, be prepared to challenge your preconceived ideas and marvel at the shortlist of the World’s 10 Coolest Car Parks.  Yes, they do exist! The contest, run by FX Magazine and Stress Free Airport Parking, recently announced […]

Parking Meters – where did all the coins go?

$210,000 US = 840,000 coins = 21,000 rolls = 10,500 lbs = 4,800 kgs If councils around the globe need any more evidence to support the upgrade to meters accepting non cash payments (credit card, phone, prepaid cards), this story might be it.  An employee of the city of Buffalo, NY has been arrested and […]

Richard III resurrected in parking lot

Another on the theme of reclaiming urban space — Manhattan theatre group, The Drilling Company, has been doing just that for more than two decades.  They have elevated the lowly parking lot to new heights with their annual summer productions of Shakespeare in the Parking Lot. Staged in the Municipal Lot at the corner of […]

A world without parking consultants? Surely not!

Ever imagined a world without cars? Some might think a world without oxygen is more palatable, but would it really be so bad? There’d be no traffic, no car accidents, no parking tickets. Goodness, there’d be no need for traffic and parking consultants whatsoever….. Actually maybe this isn’t such a good idea! Seriously though, would […]

Bike sharing program launched in NYC

New York City’s bike-sharing program was officially launched last week, sending 6,000 bright blue “Citi Bikes” onto the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn. The system will feature 24/7 access to terminals at hundreds of subway stations around New York. Each terminal is equipped with a touchscreen kiosk, a map of the service area and a […]

Synchronization gets the green light in LA

Los Angeles has long been a symbol of America’s traffic congestion with its polluted stretches of multi-lane freeways turning into car parks during rush hour, aggravating its users. However, if city planners are correct, this is about to change — with LA turning from eternal gridlock into a best practice model for traffic control. This […]

Tackling abuse of disabled parking spaces

Around the world, parking enforcement agencies battle with illegal use of disabled parking spaces by unauthorised drivers. On the Gold Coast, along with increasing fines, the city council hopes to ratify a proposal for photo IDs to be displayed with disabled parking permits. According to the Gold Coast News website, Councillor Bob La Castra admitted […]

Parking meter privatisation deal renegotiated by Chicago Mayor

Chicago City Mayor Rahm Emanuel is attempting to make up for what he describes as the mistakes of a previous administration by renegotiating its 75 year deal with the private company now responsible for running the city’s parking meters. In 2008, the Chicago Parking Meters group paid $1.15 billion for the lease to monetize about 36,000 […]

Parking lot manager in conspiracy to steal over a million dollars

A former parking lot manager at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC has pleaded guilty to his involvement in a conspiracy to steal more than $1 million in visitors’ parking fees. For just over three years, Abeselom Hailemariam was the manager at the 2,000-vehicle parking lot servicing the renowned museum precinct. […]

Parking meter technology is not always convenient

Every week we read about new car parking technology being unveiled somewhere in the world. This week, The New York Times published about the latest smart phone application being trialled in the Bronx, using real time updates to direct drivers to available parking spaces. The technology also allows for motorists to pay for parking with […]

PIE at Chicago, 2013

Cristina Lynn attended the Parking Industry Exhibition held in Chicago earlier this month on behalf of the Parking Association of Australia. The exhibition took place over three days showcasing a wide range of suppliers with many representatives from access control, parking guidance, ticket manufacturers, LED lighting and on-street technology. A very interesting group of speakers […]

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 […]

Compact automated parking garage launched in LA

AutoParkiT has just been launched in the Van Nuys district of Los Angeles. The system is designed to automatically park, store and retrieve vehicles in a compact parking structure, using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology containing details of the user to ensure the swift identification and retrieval of vehicles. Whilst automated mechanical parking is not new, this […]

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 […]

The Case For Abolishing Parking Tickets

A novel solution to managing parking fines for those found to have overstayed their limit has been proposed by Anam Ardeshiri at the annual Transportation Research Board conference in Washington last month. Mr Ardeshiri claims that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime for an inadvertent misjudgement of time by minutes, compared with those who intentionally run […]

Pango Arrives in Phoenix and New York

The next wave of mobile phone based parking technology is being rolled out across two of America’s most populated cities, New York and Phoenix. Pango, an Israel based company, claims to be the world’s first provider of pay by mobile phone parking solutions, developing the technology to give consumers a convenient and easy way to […]

New York City’s parking privatisation on hold

New York City has scrapped a controversial plan to privatise its street-parking management system. The concept was designed to help ease the financial position of the city by generating a steady revenue stream under a leasing arrangement with the private sector, according to the Wall Street Journal. However opposition to the plan was strong, citing […]

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 […]

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, […]

Minimum parking requirements in Sacramento

The City of Sacramento, California, has announced a reduction in the number of parking spaces that new commercial and urban housing projects will be required to build. According to the Sacramento Bee, city planners say existing parking rules cause some would-be business owners to back away. For some apartment complexes and residential buildings, parking requirements […]

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 & […]

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 […]

For parking to make dollars it needs to make sense

A great article on common sense in parking planning was recently published by the Houston Chronicle, which contains many simple truths about balancing parking supply and demand and the retail requirements of a high street area. In Houston, a partnership between a ‘downtown business booster’ and the top parking representative from the city, has begun […]

Can the bicycle save the high street?

Following an article we published in March, Why cyclists are better customers for local businesses, we recently came across another article that also found that cyclists and pedestrians tend to spend more money in local economies. According to TreeHugger, both Portland, Oregon and New York’s East Village have found that streets that promote cycling and […]

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 […]

Seeing the back of the car

Following our article last week, ‘Population density puts the squeeze on cars’, we came across an in-depth article from The Economist this week, titled ‘Seeing the back of the car’. The article explores how in the developed world, people seem to be driving less than they used to, with both car ownership and distances driven […]

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 […]


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