Robodude, where’s my car?
Automatic garages may be an answer to city’s parking crunch
Robots already clean pools, vacuum floors, and help assemble cars. Next they will be parking cars in Boston.
With the cost of land soaring, and construction costs for a single parking space in an underground garage running between $50,000 and $70,000 in the Boston area, automated parking systems — common in congested areas of Europe and Asia — have begun to immigrate to the United States.
Two automated parking garages are operating in the United States now, a public facility in Hoboken, N.J., and a private one in Washington, D.C. More are in planning or manufacturing stages in Florida, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco.
The first automated garage in Boston is slated for Lovejoy Wharf, a condominium complex being designed for the site of two old warehouse buildings at the mouth of the Charles River, near the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge. Construction could begin late this year.
”There are hundreds around the world,” said Robert W. Easton, principal of Ajax Management Partners LLC of Lexington, which is developing 260 residences — and 325 parking spaces — at Lovejoy Wharf. ”We are looking to be one of the first in the city.”
Automated parking garages are designed to save space, but they also take people, dents, and misplaced keys out of the parking equation.
Residents at Lovejoy Wharf would leave their vehicles on an 8-foot-long steel pallet on the floor of a one-car bay, turn off the ignition, step away, and let technology take it from there.
The pallet carries the car into the garage, moves the vehicle through the building on steel wheels and tracks, and deposits it into an available slot in a steel rack. Before parking the car, a mechanical device swivels it around 180 degrees, to speed up retrieval.
One system under consideration for Lovejoy Wharf is produced by Robotic Parking Systems Inc. of Clearwater, Fla., which offers a computerized system that relies on an off-the-shelf personal computer, Simplicity software made by General Electric Co., programmable logic controllers, wireless signals, and electronic eyes to transport vehicles in a facility.
The system memorizes residents’ use patterns and ‘’shuffles” vehicles during slow periods late at night, so early birds’ cars will be nearest the exit in the morning. Retrieval of a vehicle takes two to three minutes, and at busy times a garage, typically with two delivery bays, can deliver 80 or so an hour.
”You’re not going to be walking around a garage at night looking for your car,” said John E. Kavanagh III, president of Parking Solutions LLC, a Danvers company.
Ajax is negotiating with Parking Solutions, which has rights in New England to market and install the Robotic system. The developer is also talking to SpaceSaver Parking Co. of Chicago, whose German parent company operates 100 or so garages in other countries, and Westfalia USA Inc. of York, Pa., also an affiliate of a German company, with about a dozen systems worldwide.
Automated parking systems can accommodate a handful of cars in a small condo building — or hundreds of cars in a multifloor office tower. The steel parking systems can be built above or below ground, in concrete boxes or in buildings tailored to look like the neighborhood.
The Hoboken garage houses about 320 cars and looks from the outside like an apartment building. ”I’ve been standing in front and had people say, ‘Are there any apartments available in that building?’ ” said Parking Solutions’ Kavanagh.
Automation extends to billing and calling for a car in advance. Robotic’s system keeps track of how long a car is parked. Depending on the configuration, residents can call for their cars by swiping a card on a reader or using a personal identification number from a phone on their way out the door.
”You can leave the keys, because there’s no one in the garage,” said Kavanagh.
Automated parking isn’t designed to increase traffic — zoning and parking rules usually limit the number of spaces a building can have. Rather, it’s about using less space. Manufacturers say automated systems at least double the capacity of a normal concrete parking garage, which requires entrance and exit ramps. Cars can be packed in close together because the doors don’t open until a car is delivered to its driver at the exit bay.
The biggest factor driving acceptance of automated parking is the value of land, manufacturers say. ”Property is so dear, the only way to provide parking is to reduce the space,” said Ken Livingston, general manager of SpaceSaver.
Robotic executives say a system for a 400-car garage costs between $12,000 and $16,000 a space. Condensing the parking area to reduce the land needed for a development from 2 acres to 1, or excavating 40 feet instead of 90 feet deep, can save a developer millions of dollars.
Even though it has long had high land costs, Boston has been resistant to automated parking. ”It’s a new technology,” said Kavanagh, who is also president of William A. Berry & Son Inc., a construction management firm. ”Everybody wants to be first — but nobody wants to be the first.”
Developers want to see any new system running smoothly in other locations before they invest. ”They want a comfort level, to put away any fears about operations,” Kavanagh said.
City of Boston officials seem receptive.
”For downtown, where the footprints are small, this is a good technology,” said Vineet Gupta, director of planning at the Boston Transportation Department, who said the city has begun encouraging developers to consider automated parking. ”We’ve said, ‘Have you explored this?’ “
It probably won’t hurt Robotic that David Passafaro, a friend and former chief of staff of Mayor Thomas M. Menino, is vice president and director of business development for Kavanagh’s Berry company. Passafaro narrates a promotional video for Parking Solutions, extolling the virtues of the system that works ”almost like magic.”
”It is among the coolest things you’ll ever see,” said the enthusiastic Passafaro. ”It’s safe, it’s clean, it’s environmentally sound.”
For car owners who treat their rides like pets, the idea may bring some concerns: Will my Mercedes convertible be parked under some leaky clunker of a pickup truck?
Robotic executives say the pallets that carry cars are solid steel and have deep grooves for the wheels that are also designed to hold about 70 gallons of liquid — enough capacity for a serious oil or antifreeze leak, and for snow, ice, and mud from the highway.
The pallets are regularly — and automatically — vacuumed or washed down.
But manufacturers acknowledge that automated systems are not without their glitches.
The New York Times reported in October — ”When will the killer robot garage strike again?” — that the $12 million Hoboken facility had sent a Jeep Wrangler and a Cadillac DeVille crashing to destruction. In addition, the city, which owns the Robotic-operated garage, has paid claims to owners of 40 cars for minor damage, the newspaper said.
Larry Byrnes, a spokesman for Robotic and a member of its board of directors, said in a letter to the editor of the newspaper that ”people and local politics” had been factors in the problems. Last week he suggested the city was at fault, saying it was ”unrealistic to expect the Hoboken Parking Utility to provide operators with the skill level needed to properly supervise this cutting-edge technology.” But John Corea, director of the Hoboken agency, disagreed. ”The problem with the garage is a lack of proper maintenance from Robotics,” he said.
Those and less serious problems — like the infrequent case of someone whose car may not be available in time to get to the airport for a plane to London — are covered by the operators, the companies say.
”We just afford them taxi cab fare,” said SpaceSaver’s Livingston. ”You’re car’s available by the time you get back.”
Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at tpalmer@globe.com.
A model of the Icon Las Vegas.
