Javier Figueroa's words.toBlog()

I’ve been thinking about the future of parking garages…

I know what you are about to read is not that futuristic at all and probably a lot of people have thought of the same. I’m writing it down, just for the record, and hopefully in the future if this does occur, me or someone can have fun with it.

The future parking garage will work in the following way:

A person driving a vehicle (it could fly for all I care) goes into the garage through the lower level. This lower level is the only level where humans are allowed, meaning that there won’t be a need to be driving all over the parking garage looking for an open spot, therefore there won’t be any wasted petrol (assuming the vehicle runs in petrol) or battery, etc., you get the idea. Right at the entrance the person retrieves a ticket with a number which will point him/her to the numbered parking spot in this level, this spot is obviously available. Here I thought it would be necessary to have either a GPS-like navigation engraved in the ticket, guiding you to the parking spot or some sort of lighting system that would “light” you to your parking spot… neat.

Now, the person has arrived to the parking spot, and will step out of the vehicle and go to the store, restaurant, mall, etc.. As he/she walks away from the vehicle, the parking garage will pick up the vehicle from the parking spot. By picking up I mean the vehicle is parked on top of a platform that will rise from the ground. The vehicle is then transported to a higher level inside the parking garage and will be stored there probably in an alphabetical way, I’m thinking index by tag. This right here, would avoid almost 90% of the hussle that it is to find parking in a parking garage. Not to mention it would be safer for your vehicle (dings and dents) and for people because it avoids people getting ran over, people getting mugged, etc..

For those out there that are thinking what about the way out? I thought about it too . Well, assuming that the parking garage has assigned stores (e.g. nearby restaurants), one way this could work is that when the person is leaving that place your ticket signals a proximity alert to the garage (maybe the person will have to press a button on the ticket to avoid false proximity alerts), letting it know that the person’s vehicle is up for departure. Back in the garage the machine will probably use some fancy search algorithm and find the car based on the information of the signal. Once the person is physically in the garage he or she can find a way to the vehicle again using the ticket for navigation or something similar within the garage.

That’s it. This would be so awesome I can’t even explain how much. Hopefully I’m still around to see this happen, and I don’t mean some crappy-state-fair-like-carusel-powered parking garage. I mean really efficient type and not noisy .

Cheers!