THE DESIGN OF AN 'EVENT' PARKING GARAGE

This article offers a look at the specialized parking facility, the Event Parking Garage as it was conceived and implemented for the Houston Arena Garage. Specialty consultants are important to bring experience with the specific demands of this kind of facility. Site selection must be based on careful traffic analysis; elevators and escalators must be located and designed to move large numbers of people in short periods of time; parking spaces must be larger than typical to speed entry and exit, speed ramps must be able to carry vehicles are varying speeds. Revenue control systems are special, too, usually allowing the garage operator to simply open the gates when an event concludes through some sort of pre-payment system.