In Perth, the Motorcycle Riders Association is calling on the government to allow motorcycles and scooters to be able to park on public walkways in Perth city.

According to ABC online, they are calling for a trial policy similar to Melbourne, allowing motorcycles to park on footpaths and concrete public spaces, providing the vehicle is walked there, the vehicle is parked at least a motorcycle length away from buildings and the vehicle doesn't inhibit pedestrian access.

The MRAWA claims that the system would encourage motorcyclists to commute, which will ease traffic congestion especially at peak hour. In addition to this, they want extra free, all day parking locations to be scattered throughout the city.

Proposals are also under development for motorcycles and scooters to be permitted to use the emergency and bus lanes on Perth’s roads during peak periods.

The City of Perth, meanwhile, has ruled out any plans for footpath parking in the CBD, citing that 75,000 people walk into and around Perth’s CBD everyday; and that motorcycles parked in public spaces would cause obstruction to this free movement. Currently there is a report recommending an expansion and an additional 30 bays at the Mounts Bay Road parking lot due to go to council. If the report is approved, the Mounts Bay Road park will accommodate 102 motorcycles. 

Following our recent post on Eran Ben-Joseph’s book, ‘Rethinking a Lot’, The Guardian have also picked up on the story. They summarise some of Ben-Joseph’s key recommendations for improving parking lots to make them more ‘environmentally responsible’ and ‘aesthetically pleasing’ as follows:

Better design. Citing Miami’s car park as a prime example, drawing on great design principles would be able to restore cities and spaces to be proud of, and should add joy to the routine of driving, working and shopping.

Using new technology. A wide range of technological developments are constantly improving parking lots; from robotic car parks to parking guidance systems; pay and display to pay by mobile phone.

Reducing environmental impact. One of the key impacts of the parking lot is the heat generated by the asphalt surface of the lots, contributing to the "urban heat island" phenomenon which makes cities warmer than surrounding rural areas. A range of solutions are underway to harness this energy, from covering lots with solar panels, to developing reflective asphalt, to creating energy by heating water running in pipes beneath the lots.

Using the space above. Either through car parks built underneath existing buildings and developments; or the construction of multi-level car parks; the smaller land usage reduces their impact significantly.

Digging up car parks. Some activists are even determined to go one step further, digging up car parks and celebrating the ‘rebirth of a new greenspace’, creating permeable space instead of paved lots.

Putting some numbers around his research, Ben-Joseph claims that there are an estimated 800 million car parking spaces in the US - one for every car – and amounting to around 9,104 sq km of land space. Covering this whole area with solar panels could generate enough electricity to power 11 million households for a month. Alternatively, he claims that covering 50% of this area with trees could remove 1,260,805 tons of carbon dioxide per year. We are not sure where the cars would go instead!

Read more on The Guardian’s site here.

In New York, Citibank have announced that they are sponsoring and commercialising the bike share system. To be renamed Citi Bike, the system will be 100% privately funded with 600 stations and 10,000 bikes in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

According to TreeHugger, Citi Bike's pricing is listed as $95 for an annual pass, $25 for a 7-day pass, and $9.95 for 24-hour access. But the city of New York has plans to make sure the Citi Bikes are accessible to New Yorkers "of all income levels". A program is being developed, according to the web site, so that qualifying New Yorkers will be able to purchase a reduced annual membership for $60, payable in quarterly instalments.

It’s very interesting to see a commercial entity come on board to run the bike sharing scheme, as inherently they will be running it to set out to make a profit. However the scale of the investment and reach of the infrastructure is more likely to change behaviours than a small investment. Watch this space to see how it performs!

Sustainability and ‘green’ parking solutions have received a lot of attention in the media of late, with this blog in particular giving the cause solid support. And whilst sustainability has predominantly focused on the environmental aspects of maintenance and responsibility, it’s important to remember that long-term sustainability also encompasses other aspects: economic and social dimensions.

From an economic perspective, sustainability is about much more than green stamp on marketing materials; green investment decisions should have positive and lasting environmental effects without negatively impacting the bottom line.

A post we came across on the ‘Passport Parking’ blog this week talks about how much of the movement in the parking industry towards sustainability has focused on the ‘green’ aspect of the cause, whilst being financially and fiscally unsustainable. Passport Parking claim that the only way to continue to advance sustainability in the Parking industry is a grassroots movement toward sensible innovation that makes “going green” an easy decision for the Provider, through innovation that has long-term responsible environmental impacts while proving to be an easy implementation decision. Solutions that should be cash flow positive from the start.

Colliers International, in conjunction with Parking & Traffic Consultants, have released a white paper into CBD car parks in Australia.

The paper, entitled Australian CBD Car Parking – The Next Decade, examines the current trends and the expected future of car parks in Australia. With the number of car spaces in Australian CBDs increasing only marginally from 141,690 in 2006 to 153,400 in 2011, car parking is a finite product, with the supply of car parking expected to moderate over the next decade.

A key finding of the report was that the ratio of car parking to CBD workers is declining, along with the importance of parking relative to other forms of transport. Since 2005, proximity to public transport has remained the most important driver in attracting and retaining staff by tenants when choosing an office location and has steadily increased in importance over time.

Real estate and property yields for well-established commercial car parks are generally slightly above commercial buildings in the same price range in comparable locations, with a slight risk premium factored in to allow for increased uncertainty surrounding changes to Government legislation, casual parking as a discretionary spend which generally diminished in times of economic uncertainty, and a smaller market for car parking assets.

Parking & Traffic Consultants' own Managing Partner, Cristina Lynn, was a co-author to the report. Cristina said that with changes to technology and the cost of car parking on the rise, owners had to become more innovative in the services they provide. The benefits of new technology coupled with greater awareness of customer’s needs should ensure on going profitability and value maximisation for car park owners.

Click here to view the full white paper.

A US-based company has developed a concept prototype for a ‘solar roadway’ – a series of structurally engineered solar panels that can be driven on.

The concept sees roads literally replaced by the solar panels, which when linked together effectively serve as an energy grid itself. Any home or business connected to the Solar Roadway receives the power and data signals that the Solar Roadway provides, with the aim of becoming an intelligent, self-healing, decentralized, secure power grid.

An electric road allows electric vehicles to recharge anywhere: rest stops, parking lots, businesses and homes. Furthermore, it will reduce a significant usage of asphalt – a product made from petroleum itself, further reducing dependency on oil.

As you can see in the video below, the biggest challenge that the solar roadway faces is driving on glass – however from our interpretation of the video it seems the challenge will be more shifting our attitudes towards driving on glass than the supporting science behind it.

In one of the stranger articles we’ve come across this week, the concept of the Evacuated Tube Transport system, from design group et3.com, will see 16ft long capsules of humans traveling at around 6,500km/h and around the world in less than six hours.

According to The Creators Project, the Evacuated Tube Transport features a range of different sized capsules that can carry cargo and people and uses maglev (magnetic levitation) tracks to whisk the human (and other) cargo along to their destination from speeds of 550km/h to 6,500km/h. In the video provided below they claim the tube system can be built for a tenth of the cost of a high-speed rail system, and can travel from the US’s East to West Coast in just 45 minutes.

Sounds like completely out of a science-fiction cartoon, but if it worked as it’s proposed it could be an amazing boon for transport and reducing the environmental impact of air and road travel.

Due to be demolished to make way for the redevelopment of Darling Harbour, Sydney’s monorail has seen significant debate over what should happen to the structure once dismantled.

Landscape architect David Vago has drawn up a plan to take inspiration from New York’s famous High Line (see our blog post about the High Line here!), and turn the tracks into an elevated boardwalk and cycleway. His proposal would involve a three to five-metre-wide deck across the track, creating a 3.6-kilometre public walkway through the central business district.

The High-Lane, as he calls it, could be used by joggers, cyclists, office workers, parents with prams and tourists. The existing pylons would become vertical gardens and Monorail stations would be transformed into pocket parks, cafes and gallery spaces, taking around 12 to 18 months to build.

All the government entities remain non-committal regarding the project, with some scepticism and concerns given the proposed demolition to make way for the Darling Harbour redevelopment. 

A new type of garage is on sale from architects EcoSpace which turns the once humble and hidden away parking garage into the centrepiece of your back garden.

The modular garage is designed to be a showroom for your car, with features like ambient lighting, floor-to-ceiling glazing and even modular storage systems available. Security is taken care of with roller blinds, and the garages come with natural materials and insulation as standard.

At a cost of $70,000, the AutoSpace offers tailored, contemporary design to your specific needs - so you can have multiple cars, a workshop or office space built in. Perhaps a bed so you never need be away from your car for too long?

The New York Times recently carried an article by Eran Ben-Joseph, a professor of urban planning at MIT and author of ‘Rethinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking’. In it, Ben-Joseph shares his vision for transforming the parking lot into a space beyond simply providing parking availability and convenience.

He believes that the parking lot needs to evolve to include a variety of other uses, mitigate its effect on the environment and give greater consideration to aesthetics and architectural context.

Environmentally, parking lots come with costs – including increased heat from the exposed asphalt pavement, as well as water runoff from the impervious surfaces. A better parking lot might be covered with solar canopies so that it could produce energy while lowering heat, or may be surfaced with a permeable material like porous asphalt and planted with trees in rows like an apple orchard, so that it could sequester carbon and clean contaminated runoff.

Parking lots are also one of the most utilised outdoor spaces – public spaces that people interact with and use on a daily basis, and one of the few places where cars and pedestrians coexist. Better parking lots would expand and embrace this role, providing a range of public activities such as farmers markets and food stalls, contributing as much to their communities as great boulevards, parks or plazas.

Some great concepts, thinking and questioning of the role of parking lots in our society. Read more on the NY Times website here, or more on Ben-Joseph’s book here.