| THERE'S AN IDEA: Trying to Fit in
How nice would it be if parking garages simply pointed you to the open spaces? In some cities, they do. THE IDEA: At Baltimore/Washington International Airport, parking is made a little easier with the help of intelligent signs. Digital signs tell you how many spots are open on each floor and on each row of the airport's hourly parking garage. Ceiling-mounted lights above each parking space indicate if the space is empty (green light) or occupied (red light). Say goodbye to wasting time hunting for a space and getting dizzy in the process. This parking system has been spotted in garages as far away as Melbourne. WHY BOSTON NEEDS IT: We have an abundance of cars and a dearth of parking spaces. About 600,000 vehicles are driven into the city daily, according to the Boston Transportation Department. "One of the fundamental quirks of parking in the area," says W. Kevin Fitzgerald, president of local garage and parking lot operator Fitz-Inn Parking Systems, "is that we use spaces in the daytime for work and flip them over in the nighttime for events. The problem is sometimes those daytime people haven't left when the nighttime people are coming in." PROBABILITY FACTOR: It's looking good. This summer, Logan Airport added signs outside the Terminal B garage that alert drivers to the number of open spaces, and Logan plans to add these signs to all airport garages by next spring. We'd really like to see this technology downtown, and a few garages are getting more tech-savvy. Anant Pavidapha, a supervisor at the Auditorium Garage on Dalton Street, says the facility has a computerized system that tells the garage staff how many spaces are unoccupied at any given moment, but it doesn't have signs informing drivers who are on the prowl for parking. And what about those overhead red and green lights? Garages can be easily retrofitted with these devices at a cost of about $375 per parking space, says Farroll Barrett, national sales manager for Phoenix-based Signal Park, a distributor of the parking systems. Chump change. - - Patrick Gerard HealyBack |
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