The Future for UK Airport Car Parking
Written by TonyAs UK airports continue to expand car park operators are realising that that there isn’t the space to meet the increasing demand for car parking using the current conventional style of car park. Instead high rise parking lots, as used in Japan, are being considered.
Space in Japan is in such short supply that some car parks are now high rise buildings. Unlike the multi-storey car parks that we are familiar with these car parks don’t require that you drive to your parking bay, negotiating unfeasibly tight corners without scratching your paint-work. Your car is simply loaded onto a computer controlled carousel and taken to the secure parking bay automatically.
When you return to collect your car the operator punches the details into the computer system and your car is retrieved, much like an old Jukebox would retrieve a selected record. All very neat and efficient. A similar system is used by Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, Germany where they have a 20 storey facility that takes up only 20% of the space that would be needed by a conventional car park handling the same number of vehicles.
This new style of high-tech computerized car park has the added advantage of being exceptionally secure as vehicles are not readily accessible once parked.
It may be some time before we see one of these new facilities in operation at a UK airport but with the increasing demand for cheap air travel comes a similar demand for cheap airport parking and this will only be met with innovative new ideas like these Japanese style high rise car parks.
