PARKING CARS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 150, 21 December 1929, Page 29

PARKING CARS

By "Aiiros."

AN AUTOMATIC LIFT

ECONOMY OF TIBIE AND SPACE

A bold attempt to solve the parking problem iv the great cities of tho world is being made by the Westinghouse Electric Company, which has developed the machine that forma the subject of the picture below. It is a lift that provides a series of platforms on to which the cars are driven and stowed overhead. The motorist drives on to the platform, pulls a lever, obtains a check, and the car automatically goes upward, the machine. immediately placing . another platform at ground level, ready for another car. When the car is required again the motorist pushes a button corresponding to his check, and his car. is delivered to him at ground level almost immediately without any of the vexatious delay commonly experienced in the ordinary garage. This new, parking machine occupies a ground space equal to that of only a small private two-car garage. It"can

be built into old or new buildings for almost any capacity or can be set up on small vacant pieces-of land. Several 'machines' grouped together would constitute a largo ultra-modem storage garage. ;

The machine consists of two endless chains passing over wheels at tho top and bottom. Platforms, suspended between these chains, each provide space for one automobile. The house or section of the building occupied by the-machine is unique because it has. no floors. "The motor car remains parked 011 the machine until called for. With such equipment built into office buildings, hotels, theatres, and public buildings, and constructed at convenient locations'on unoccupied sections, the city streets could be kept cleared of parked cars and made safer for moving traffic. The time is coming when buildings must provide for tho motorcars of its tenants as well as for the tenants themselves and, besides business premises, the. building of parking machines into apartment houses would solve the garage problem in congested apartment house districts. The devices could -be erected at frequcst intervals in residential neighbourhoods, thereby saving motorists the cost of building' and maintaining privato garages. A group of motor-car parking machines built into a theatre or store building would permit motorists to drive- from their homes directly into the theatre or store and to park their cars without exposing themselves to the weather.

By-the use of the parking machines considerable money now spent in widening streets to accommodate parked cars could be saved. By eliminating parking on the sides of streets through tne use of the machines, existing streets in most cases would be wide enough to accommodate moving traffic An important feature of the new device .is that it can be equipped to operate automatically by placing a com in a slot thereby doing away "with the necessity for attendants. It is interesting to note that this machine may also be applied to another city problem, the holding of buses and also of tram-ears at spots where there will be a .sudden demand n?L m>^ SUch as sports gatherings, alter theatre rushes, etc., where the demand is quite .foreseen, i s . regular or frequent- and- always causes congestion or blockage of traffic. The trouble may bo witnessed on a small scale any night in New Zealand cities when the picture, shows and theatres are about to pour out their thousands or. people all with one idea only in their heads of getting home without delay Uines of trams are drawn up on the rails outside, temporarily holding up the_ ordinary flow of tram traffic, and T,v^ Sf ai}f Cal S, all about piachcally block the street. With such a system as that depicted.here it oTt I*^ Foible to hold any number of trams, buses, and taxis for release ono after another from stations off the street leaving the street itself always tree for moving vehicles. It is a sit uation that will have to bo achieved somehow, and this machine seems to be Mo« al f c°V tribttt, i(>n *° an ultimate soluwon o± the problem. :