Robot or bus?

Is an underground automatic parking lot the future of parking in Israel, or another way to ignore the transportation problem in the city centers?

Assaf Ben Naria, Angle - Science and Environment News Agency

Working in the packaging department of the "Amazon" company was until recently one of the most difficult and abrasive jobs in the market. This is a job that requires walking between mountains of shelves in a huge space for long hours, all for a not very high salary. And then camehoped", a short, orange robot that changed the rules of the game. From now on, instead of the worker going to the shelf - the shelf comes to the worker. The result is that the amount of time needed for packing has been reduced sixfold, and the employees are satisfied with the new co-worker - even though he is a little less interesting for conversation in the coffee corner.

Robotic warehouses are becoming more and more common around the world, and you are recognizing that there are things that robots simply do better than their creators. For example, parking. For every resident of a big city, searching for a parking space for long minutes is a daily matter. Sometimes, by the time a slot is already found, it turns out that it is only slightly smaller than what is needed for the family car. If only it were possible to move the vehicle in front a few centimeters forward and the one behind a few more back, the search would stop and the driver would find rest and peace, at least for a few hours.

This is exactly what the parking robot does.

The end of the parking crisis?

The robotic parking comes to answer the existing parking shortage in the city centers. The high land prices and lack of areas for construction have made the possibility of parking lots on the ground irrelevant in the big cities. In more serious cases, the solution of building an underground parking lot is also not feasible, due to the large area needed or because of the developer's desire to build warehouses for tenants under the building. In new construction projects and urban renewal projects or TMA 38, finding a parking solution is one of the main obstacles in obtaining a building permit, and in many cases it is the one that will make the project economically feasible or not.

A robotic garage is a kind of box made of concrete and buried underground. On the surface, we usually only see a surface the size of a car, which is used as a vehicle lift, on which the vehicle owner parks the car. Inside the box are, one above the other, the parking spaces, which are occupied by all the building's vehicles. As in Amazon's automated warehouse, the parking robot recognizes the vehicles and examines their dimensions in order to match them with parking that meets their needs. In a series of efficient operations, which are carried out through a network of conveyors and elevators, the robot steers the vehicle to the vacant parking lot. Unlike humans, he will not forget where he parked the vehicle, and upon receiving the instruction from the owner of the vehicle, will pull out the correct vehicle and bring it back to ground level, usually facing the direction of travel.

Inside the box, which is deep in the ground, the cars are arranged in an exemplary order while making maximum use of the entire volume of the space. The Japanese, who are considered world leaders in the field of robotic parking, have identified about a thousand different ways to place these facilities. The common method is parking racks that include a conveyor belt that moves horizontally or vertically, similar to the automatic warehouses. However, among the more creative facilities you can find a parking roller, a roller parking and a horizontal and vertical "parking machine" in which the parking spaces move in a circle.

According to Giora Neve, CEO of the company parking meter, which specializes in the field of mechanical and automatic parking facilities, the cost of building a robotic parking facility with a capacity of about 20 vehicles is around three million shekels. "A central component of the cost is the digging of the pit into which the parking box is inserted, and this figure varies according to the type of soil and the proximity to the groundwater," he explains. The monthly operating cost, which includes maintenance and service with the highest availability, amounts to NIS 100 per vehicle. Entering or exiting a vehicle lasts on average about 120 seconds, and the energy consumption amounts to half a kilowatt hour (the price of a kilowatt hour in Israel is 57 agorat). Unlike a normal parking lot, no pollutants are emitted during parking, and the wear and tear on the car is low compared to underground parking (the thieves' job is also more difficult). The company already operates several active robotic parking systems in Ramat Gan and Tel Aviv, and in the next six months the installation of five additional systems is planned, most of them in urban renewal projects. What are the reactions of the tenants in those buildings? According to Noah, "Every driver prefers a shaded rectangle on the ground on which he can park his car. However, compared to the alternative, the area is plagued by a parking problem, as long as the facility works smoothly the tenants are satisfied."

Cheap parking is expensive

Two and a half million private vehicles crowd Israel's roads, according to Central Bureau of Statistics data from 2014. The motoring level of Israeli citizens is not particularly high, standing at 300 vehicles per thousand inhabitants. For comparison, in Germany, Australia and Italy the number of vehicles per thousand people is over 500. However, an annual increase of three percent in the number of cars and their concentration in the big cities, together with a lack of transportation infrastructure in general and parking spaces in particular, creates a rather bleak transportation picture. In such a situation, is it necessary to further increase the number of parking lots in the big cities, thereby encouraging the use of private cars?

Apparently, the robotic parking lots offer a perfect solution - the cars are parked underground, and the street returns to the residents. Gardens will be established instead of parking lots and benches will be placed instead of cars. No more wandering for long minutes in search of parking, and less pollution emitted into the environment. is that so?

Tamar Kinan, director of the "Transportation Today and Tomorrow" organization, emphasizes the negative side of increasing the parking supply, which is ignored by the policy makers in the government and municipalities. "Creating more parking spaces will increase the amount of cars entering the city. If a driver knows that he has a parking space at the destination he is going to, and that when he returns home he will not have to look for parking again, the choice of a private car will be made almost naturally." According to her, "the energies and technologies should be invested in improving public transportation - in improving the bus stations, for example." In addition, according to Keenan, increasing the number of parking spaces in the city centers will result in an additional load on infrastructures that have been busy for a long time.

in the document of the organization The rationale for moving from a demand-satisfaction approach to a demand-management policy is presented. "A demand satisfaction policy is not sustainable, because we solve one problem and create another," she explains. The organization was one of the initiators of the parking redemption law, which aims to encourage the use of public transportation to get to the workplace. The proposal, which ultimately did not pass, stated that an employee who gives up the parking space assigned to him by the employer will be entitled to payment, only if he does not park elsewhere in his work area.

In large cities around the world, they realized that the approach of satisfying the demand for parking by increasing the supply encourages more and more people to use the private car, thus increasing the problem of traffic jams and air pollution. In the test conducted by "Transport today and tomorrow" the existing standards for regulating parking in the world were examined. In London, for example, the traffic administration adopts a policy of banning parking along the main arteries, reducing the number of parking spaces on residential streets and limiting the number of parking spaces in the construction of new projects. At the same time, emphasis was placed on improving conditions for cyclists and pedestrians. In the city of Cambridge, the number of parking spaces in the city center was also limited to 80 percent of the demand of residents of the area, plus five percent of the demand of drivers who are not residents of the area. Outside the city center, one hundred percent of the demand is met.

Recalculate route
Searching for parking for a long time is certainly an undesirable phenomenon. During an average ten-minute parking search, a private car consumes between a tenth and a quarter of a liter of fuel. If we multiply this figure by 22, the average number of working days per month, we get between two and five liters. This means that just by looking for parking, we "burn" between one and two tanks of fuel per year. Can the parking problem be solved just by adding spaces in creative ways? Professionals in the field of traffic planning are sure that only a holistic approach will lead to a solution to the problem of transportation in Israel, and for this purpose it is necessary to systematically examine all the factors that affect transportation in Israel, and determine what is right for the Israeli driver looking for parking and the Israeli public who wants to get home or to work.

Simulation video of a robotic car park

Simulation of an automatic parking system. RokerHRO, Wikipedia