Multi-storey car park
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- "Parking garage" redirects here. For the Seinfeld episode see The Parking Garage (Seinfeld episode).
A multi-storey car park or a parking garage is a building (or part thereof) which is designed specifically to be for automobile parking and where there are a number of floors or levels (stories or storeys) on which parking takes place. It is essentially a stacked car park or parking lot.
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[edit] Nomenclature
The term "multi-storey car park" is used in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore and many Commonwealth of Nations countries. In most of North American English, the term parking structure is used, especially when it is necessary to distinguish such a structure from the "garage" in a house or an automobile service station. In some places in North America, "parking garage" refers only to an indoor (often underground) structure – outdoor multi-level parking facilities being referred to by a number of regional terms, most often parking deck in eastern American English, or the uniquely Canadian English parkade (a portmanteau of "parking arcade"). Architects and civil engineers are likely to call it a parking structure instead, since their work is all about various structures, and that term is the vernacular in some of the western United States. The term parking ramp is used in the upper Midwest, especially Minnesota and Wisconsin, and has been observed as far east as Toledo, Ohio and Buffalo, New York. In the United States building codes use the term "Open Parking Structure" to refer to a structure designed for car storage (not repair) that has enough openings in the walls that it does not need mechanical ventilation or sprinklers, as opposed to a "Parking Garage" that requires mechanical ventilation or sprinklers but does not require openings in the walls. The openings provide fresh air flow to disperse either car exhaust or fumes from a fire should one break out within the structure.
[edit] Design
Movement of vehicles between floors can be effected by:
- interior ramps, most often
- exterior ramps - which may take the form of a circular ramp ( a.k.a. a 'whirley-gig' )
- vehicle lifts or elevators, rarely
In locations where the car park is built on sloping land, the car park may be split-level.
Many car parks are independent buildings that are dedicated exclusively to that use. The design loads for car parks are often less than office building they serve (50 psf versus 80 psf) and this has lead to long floor spans of 55 to 60 feet permitnng cars to park in rows without the building columns obstructing the cars. The most common structural systems in the United States for these structures are either prestressed concrete concrete double tee floor systems or post-tensioned cast-in-place concrete floor systems. In recent times, car parks built to serve residential and some business properties are built as part of a larger building, and often are built underground as part of the basement.
Car parks which serve shopping centres can sometimes be built adjacent to the shopping centre so as to effect easier access at each floor between shops and parking. One example is the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, USA, which has two large car parks attached to the building at the eastern and western ends of the mall.
[edit] Automated parking
Nowadays automatic multi-storey car parks are appearing. They provide lower building cost per parking slot as it typically requires less building volume and less ground area than a conventional facility with the same capacity. However, the cost of the mechanical equipment within the building ( needed to transport cars internally ) needs to be added to the lower building cost to determine the total costs. Other costs are usually lower too, for example there is no need for an energy intensive ventilating system, since cars are not driven inside and human cashiers or security personnel may not be needed.
Automated car parks rely on similar technology that is used for mechanical handling and document retrieval. The driver leaves the car in an entrance module. It is then transported to a parking slot by a robot trolley. For the driver, the process of parking is reduced to leaving the car inside an entrance module.
At peak periods a wait may be involved before entering or leaving. The wait is due to the fact that loading passengers and luggage occurs at the entrance and exit location rather than at the parked stall. This loading blocks the entrance or exit from being available to others. Whether the retrieval of vehicles is faster in an automatic car park or a self park car park depends on the layout and number of exits.
