Just about every one of the technologies that we utilize today had to go through initial development and successive iterations before they reached their current forms. Automated car parking is no different. Starting out as more basic mechanical parking systems, they slowly evolved through the efforts of a multitude of individuals and companies over the years. Today, it is possible for buildings and parking areas to include mechanical lifts, semi-automated structures, and fully automated systems. Mechanical systems can lift cars one or more levels above the ground so that two or more cars can park in the equivalent of one parking space. They need people to drive in and remove vehicles themselves, though. Semi-automated car parking systems can shuffle around platforms so that users don’t need to first take-out vehicles at the bottom to access vehicles sitting on higher platforms. However, they still need people to park and back out of the spaces. Fully automated parking systems are complex and can accept cars at a front area. From there, they arrange the cars within their storage spaces without any human aid. We’ll discuss the history of automated parking systems in this post so that you can see how the parking solutions available in modern times came to be.
Early Conceptual Manifestations
Although the need for saving space was nowhere near as dire as it is now, inventors still began to think about how to address the issue of increasing automobile storage capacity within confined spaces. The first instance of an automated parking system appeared in Paris, France at the Garage Rue du Ponthieu in 1905. At that time, a civil engineer named Auguste Perret had a building project where he was confined to a limited amount of land. His system had more similarities to mechanical parking systems, as it had a simple powered lift that acted as an elevator between three floors. It needed attendants to drive the cars in and out of the elevator and into and out of spaces on each of the floors.
In the 1920s, the concept of automated car parking reached the US. There, people created several versions of the systems in major cities where automobile concentrations were the highest, such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. A popular system was the paternoster system. It rotated vehicles on a structure resembling a Ferris wheel and allowed for eight cars to fit in the equivalent of two normal grounded spaces. The paternoster system was also easily adaptable and could fit inside buildings. Its setup was like, albeit more basic than, the semi-automatic systems you can see nowadays. Besides this, the US saw systems arise that operate on electrical or hydraulic power that stacked cars on top of one another. These became the basis for modern-day mechanical parking systems.
Harding Glass Industries and Mechanical Parking
Focusing on Harding Steel’s place in this history, the company began as Harding Glass in 1948 and provided glass and glazing services for commercial and residential settings in the Midwest. Later, founder Wayne Harding developed business relationships with parking innovators to offer parking solutions to America. These men included Robert Lichti, who invented the Ferris wheel-like Vert-A-Park system, and Ed Greer, who invented mechanical lift system called Duopark. Over the years, Harding Steel would continue to refine its automated parking systems and broaden its reach all over the world.
The Period of Waning Interest in the US
Interest in parking systems it was at its highest in the US from the 1920s to the 1960s. Unfortunately, quite a few of the systems that appeared at the time operated so slowly that people found them inconvenient. Furthermore, the systems experienced relatively frequent malfunctions. In the neighboring United Kingdom, the Auto Stacker that opened in Woolrich in 1961 likewise proved to be difficult to operate. The US ended up having builders convert most of its parking systems for other uses. For instance, a prominent system that a company called Kent Automatic Garages had built transformed into a combination of office space and luxury condominiums in 1983. With no pressing need for greater land efficiency apparent, it seemed that further parking system growth was reaching an end.
Further Development in Europe and Asia
Contrary to the situation in the US, however, countries in Europe and Asia continued to design and implement automatic car parking systems. Wohr in Germany consistently sought greater heights in this industry. The company started with its Electromechanical Parking System Type 100 in 1962, which was a mechanical lift that increased the capacity of a single parking space from one to two. It supplied 81 such systems for an underground car park in Zittelstrasse, Munich. From there, Wohr continued to innovate until 1974, when it completely devoted its efforts to creating, manufacturing, and setting up parking systems. This paved the way for the company to develop its first fully automatic car parking system, the Parksafe 580, which did not need drivers to park their cars but instead moved them itself in an underground storage space. Wohr also saw expansion into Asia with applications of its systems in Malaysia in 1986 and Taiwan in 1992. Meanwhile, Japan also became a notable country in the world of automated car parking. Due to the high population density of its cities, the nation produced over 40,000 parking spaces with paternoster automated parking systems in the early 1990s. That number increased further as the decade went on.
Renewed Interest in the US
With cities becoming more and more crowded and other countries making the potential of automated parking systems clear, the US regained interest in automatic car parking systems in the 1990s. Following this, the first robotic parking garage in the States appeared in Hoboken, NJ in 2002. With its own long-standing experience and expertise in the field of parking systems, Harding Steel partnered with Wohr Autoparksysteme GmbH in 2015 to bring state-of-the-art and customizable parking solutions to US buildings and parking areas. In certain situations, mechanical lifts and semi-automated systems may make the most sense, so these remain prevalent. At the same time, automated parking systems now utilize advanced software and hardware to operate without drivers present in a variety of configurations. They have horizontally moving conveyor arrangements, vertical towers, and Storage Retrieval Systems (SRUs) that place cars in shelf structures. Though it has come a long way, the history of automated parking systems is nowhere near complete, and leaders like Harding Steel will continue to help address the parking needs of buildings everywhere.
