that might come in handy...
Parking has always been difficult in Ann Arbor. It's a perpetual source of bitching and complaining (on all sides) when issues of urban development, transportation, downtown accessibility, etc. come up in public forums. Heck, I can't think of a single city where someone isn't bitching about not being able to find a parking space withing 20 feet of the front door of where they want to go.
Recently, Homeless Dave did a teeter-totter interview with parking professional Steven Smith, and later on shared some data. I never really thought of myself as a "parking nerd", but I guess I am. The graph on the right that I stole from Dave shows how many parking spaces are available in a certain parking structure over one week. Fascinating. I'm wondering if there isn't some data dropping out over the weekend though - surely the occupancy is not flat-line stable over the weekend - there's at least gotta be a bump on Saturday evening at the 4th and Washington structure. I'm sure of it. Anyway, if you're heading to Ann Arbor and needing a parking spot, you can check here before you leave to see how many spots are left in your intended lot before you go there.
Some might say "these people have too much time on their hands... don't they have work to do?" Well, for the City of Ann Arbor and DDA, it is their work. Besides, you're just reading blogs. Don't you have work to do?
oh yeah, and there's this cool map that links to the live data that shows little pie charts. Numbers are great, but pie charts that show how filled the lots are? mmm, nifty.
3 comments:
re: data on Sundays
The count of available spaces depends on knowing the initial number, then incrementing up and down at the entrance-exit gates.
But the gates are up on Sundays because parking is free then. That's why there's a flat line in the graph.
Don't know the technical details, but I imagine if setting the gates to 'shoot blanks' were a trivial matter, they would just do that. My impression is that the exit gate requires manual control from the booth attendant, so that's one reason it might not be all that simple.
If they become really keen to get the Sunday 'free' data, I suppose they could resort to the same devices used to count traffic: sensor in a tube laid across the road.
HD - thanks for the clarification, I hadn't thought of the free Sundays.
But if the gates are up and they start counting, it's possible they might get "leakage". I wonder how they correct for that... do they do a manual re-count every week? Specifically:
- assume paid parking at 4th & William (capacity 282) ends with 250 available spaces, and 32 drivers needed a cab to get home Saturday night.
- on Sunday during the day, those 32 responsible bar patrons come and get their cars but aren't counted on the way out.
- on Sunday during the day, cars come and go, but when the gates come down on Monday, there's only 15 cars left in the structure.
Are the counters manually reset, or does the garage automation think that there are 17 "phantom" cars still in the structure?
Regarding the sensor - I thought that they had loop sensors in the pavement sensing cars at the entrance gate to only allow ticket dispensing when a car is there - making the ticket dispensing more robust (prevents dispensing or counting via a spurious button-push by a pedestrian)... I might just be imagining that though.
re: "I thought that they had loop sensors in the pavement sensing cars at the entrance gate"
There's a sign at Ann Ashley indicating a prohibition against cyclists--specifically because they can't be sensed. So you're almost certainly right.
re: recalibration of numbers. I think I remember reading a News article that referenced a manual count every so often to get an accurate starting number. However, rummaging though the Ann Arbor District Library online archive of News articles didn't turn up anything. But surely that's what they do.
Post a Comment