The Debate Over the Best Parking Garage Design

0:00 Parking garages, the best place to rendevous

0:02 with a trench coatwearing stranger with highly valuable information.

0:05 Besides that though, they've got some of the worst,

0:07 most infuriating, yet also most boring places in humanity's built environments.

0:12 But some are better than others.

0:13 So, I thought, hey, I've got time, you've got time.

0:16 How about we all spend between 5 and 10

0:17 minutes discussing the relative merits of different parking garage designs?

0:20 Like, what's this about?

0:22 And why do people hate it so much more than

0:23 they hate this, even though it's better in almost every way?

0:26 And while every other semic comedic funucational YouTuber

0:28 out there is scared to even touch this stuff, I'm stepping up to the plate.

0:32 So, in the spirit of the setting, let me just get changed over here.

0:36 I have some highly valuable information for you.

0:39 If you're building a parking garage, first off, stop it.

0:41 [music] Build apartments and a choo choo train instead.

0:44 But if you insist, there are a lot of things you have to consider.

0:47 For example, parking spaces should be 8 feet

0:49 and 3 in across or about 2 and 1/2 mters.

0:52 But you can get away with 7'6 or one Yao Ming for compact cars.

0:55 [music] Just don't park a car while Yao Ming is laying there.

0:58 But if it's parking for a retail place,

1:01 you should widen it out to 9 ft, about 3 m,

1:03 I guess, to leave room for people to shove

1:05 bags into the back seat rather than use the trunk.

1:07 Once you picked how big your spaces will be, all that's left is everything else.

1:11 Your ramp should have a grade no steeper than 5%,

1:13 though people will tolerate parking on up to 7% if necessary.

1:16 For ramps without parking on them, 12 to 14% is all right,

1:20 or even up to 20% if you're confident snow and ice won't be a problem.

1:23 Oh, also, you need at least two exits and a lot of lights.

1:26 And people really don't like driving more than six loops,

1:28 [music] so try to keep everything under that.

1:30 All those factors, as well as all relevant building codes and safety standards,

1:33 are on top of the more obvious forces shaping your design.

1:36 How much land do I have?

1:37 What shape is it?

1:38 Is it flat?

1:38 [music] Is it underground?

1:40 Does it have to support a 100 story skyscraper on top of it?

1:42 Ultimately, the project of designing any parking garage, let alone a good one,

1:46 is in part about configuring the space you

1:47 have to contain the maximum number of spaces, called stalls in the industry,

1:51 while making sure the whole garage is usable and up to standard.

1:54 All that's for the sake of maximizing part car space and therefore revenue.

1:58 But another big part is managing the traffic flow or the moving car experience,

2:02 which is tricky because as we know, parking is basically a big game of musical

2:06 chairs where everyone's driving an enormous death

2:07 machine with a bumper sticker on it

2:08 that says honk if you like pizza or whatever.

2:10 In a parking garage, you both need to figure out how

2:13 the people looking for spaces will move around efficiently,

2:15 how the people leaving spaces will get out cleanly,

2:16 [music] and how the people not in cars walking out of the garage

2:19 will get around without being slowly rolled over by an SUV.

2:22 And any design you choose will have benefits and drawbacks,

2:25 though basically all do prioritize not killing pedestrians,

2:27 so we won't get into that too much.

2:29 Let's start with some of the most basic designs.

2:31 This is a single helix with parking

2:33 on the ramps and two-way traffic flow all the way.

2:35 You drive up towards the top until you find a spot.

2:37 Then as you leave, you just drive back down the exact way you came up.

2:41 Super straightforward.

2:42 Pros, it's intuitive.

2:43 Nobody's going to get lost.

2:44 Cons, it's pretty easy to disrupt traffic as you

2:47 pull a car in or take a car out.

2:49 And also, any traffic flow that has people going in a single

2:51 file line past every space can get infuriating when it's busy.

2:55 You've been there.

2:56 You're basically crawling past row after row of full spaces,

2:59 knowing that if a free one ever appears, the guy in front of you is getting it,

3:02 and you just end up behind a different guy.

3:05 You can ease some of this with a slightly more complicated design.

3:08 I present the double helix.

3:10 As a matter of getting cars in and out of spaces efficiently, this guy rules.

3:14 You have up ramps and down ramps.

3:16 And if you include crossover points,

3:18 if people aren't finding spots or are stuck behind someone,

3:20 they can cut across to the other helix and try their luck there.

3:23 And because of the one-way traffic flow, you have double loaded parking,

3:26 [music] meaning one lane width of driving from which

3:29 people can pull into parking spots to either side.

3:32 So more of your total space is

3:33 dedicated to [music] parking spaces than driving lanes,

3:36 which is nice and efficient.

3:37 So much so that with a double helix design,

3:39 you can sometimes fit more than twice as many parking spots than

3:42 you would in a single helix using the same amount of space.

3:45 Not to mention, you save a lot of people a lot of spiral-shaped driving.

3:49 [music] So, what's the problem?

3:51 Well, people get awfully confused.

3:53 You can be standing here looking at your car on the downside,

3:57 walk down to get it, and end up a floor below.

4:00 Tik Tok, the app where everything is both true and important,

4:03 is full of people complaining about tricky parking garages

4:06 that make it impossible to find and get to their cars.

4:08 And those will usually be double helix garages.

4:11 At least I hope so.

4:12 If you're that lost in a single helix, your mother and I are worried about you.

4:16 Now, those are your options if you want people

4:18 to be able to park on all your ramps.

4:20 But you can speed things up or complicate them, depending who you ask,

4:23 by adding one of two types of non-parking ramps, speed ramps and express ramps.

4:28 Speed ramps are pretty simple,

4:29 just a ramp with no parking that traverses one floor.

4:32 It can be narrower than a ramp with spots and a bit steeper, too.

4:35 Express ramps, on the other hand, are ramps where you can zip up and down

4:39 the whole garage without passing a parking space at all.

4:42 Like, for example, at Norfolk International Airport.

4:45 Here, all the twisting happens on these non-parking

4:47 spiral express ramps in the middle, which you can use to quickly pick which

4:51 floor's parking lot you want to check for spaces.

4:53 Those are double helixes themselves.

4:55 You can't park on them,

4:56 but they do take you up or down two floors with every 360° of rotation.

5:01 Here, you'll spend comparatively little time

5:02 following someone around looking for spots

5:04 because it's easy to zip up or down to some other level entirely.

5:08 But it has the same confusions and annoyances as a regular old double helix.

5:12 If you're parked on the fourth floor [music] on the right, good luck finding,

5:15 let alone getting to your car all the way on the fourth floor

5:17 on the left if you didn't memorize which elevator you need to take.

5:20 Perhaps the ultimate double helix is here

5:23 under the Royal Botanical Garden in Sydney,

5:25 Australia, providing parking for the iconic Sydney Opera House.

5:28 Back in the day when they were designing parking here,

5:31 they'd planned to do a more classic rectangular design,

5:33 but there was a rule that said someone in the garage had

5:35 to be no more than 60 m from fire escape at a given time.

5:38 [music] And in the rectangular design,

5:40 they were losing a lot of spaces to mandatory fire escapes.

5:43 [music] That was until someone had the idea

5:45 to do a big cylinder-shaped double helix ramp.

5:48 It goes down 12 stories underground,

5:50 but you only feel like you're driving six [music] because it's

5:53 six loops of parking on the way down and six back up.

5:56 Not really any different than the standard double helix,

5:58 but infinitely cooler because it's got more curvy bits,

6:01 not unlike the Sydney Opera House itself.

6:03 So, there you have it.

6:04 Design can make parking garages better or cooler or curvier,

6:06 [music] but that often goes handin-hand

6:08 with making people confused and irrationally angry.

6:11 But you know what?

6:12 [music] The double helix got Watson, Crick, and Wilkins the Nobel Prize,

6:15 so it should be good enough for us.

6:19 Designing parking garages is all about problem solving.

6:21 And honestly, between those dumb little tickets the machine

6:24 feeds out and glitchy apps that don't work,

6:26 there are a lot of problems to solve.

6:27 Thankfully, there's also Brilliant, which helps people become better problem

6:30 solvers by building genuine understanding of topics.

6:33 Maybe the parking design people should use it.

6:35 Brilliant helps learners reach learning goals.

6:37 Look, I'm not an engineer and I don't build parking garages.

6:40 I can barely find my way around them.

6:42 But through interactive challenges and hands-on concepts on things

6:44 like proportional reasoning and coordinate planes from Brilliant,

6:47 I've developed a better understanding of how to approach problems

6:50 that are even harder to solve than designing parking garages.

6:53 Unlike me, you are good at math,

6:54 [music] and Brilliant offers different ways to approach learning more

6:57 so that math or engineering or science just makes more sense.

7:01 If you want to try Brilliant for free for a full 30 days,

7:04 go to brilliant.org/h ai, scan the QR code on screen,

7:08 or click the link in the description.

7:10 Brilliant's also given our viewers 20% off an annual premium subscription

7:14 which gives you unlimited daily access [music] to everything on Brilliant.

7:17 Please give Brilliant to try and then I won't have

7:19 to make videos about all the problems with parking garages.

7:21 But then I also I need problems to make videos about ah