NEWS
NATIONAL
SEARCH COMES TO AN END
THE ONE MILLION DOLLAR SPACE
The world’s first $1m parking space has gone on sale in New York, it was reported in The Daily Telegraph.
A frequently quoted statistic suggests that in many of the world’s busiest cities, people can spend up to 30 minutes circling and looking for a parking space. But an inventor from Brighton has created a gadget that will help motorists find a space in a fraction of that time.
Adrian Bone has built a sensor, which is placed throughout car parks and constantly sends updates to reveal free spaces. Users simply check their location and drive to where there is an open space – instead of spending hours searching for one. And it would not only be good news for the motorist; parking managers would benefit from the invention. Bone says the sensors keep track of how long a car
has been parked in the spot. The information would be obtainable by a central electronic calculator, which would assess parking fines and even send out removal vehicles if necessary. The sensor – called ‘Parking Patch’ – is a 7cm grey disc, which interfaces with smartphones to allow council parking teams to remotely monitor spaces. Bone told Inventorspot. com: ‘There have been ideas like this before, but now the technology exists to make it a reality. Rather than driving ground searching for empty spaces, drivers would be able to check their mobiles to find a space.’
Marketing the idea will now be the biggest challenge for Bone. Installation of the
SIGNS NO MORE
A campaigner has succeeded in having ‘no overnight parking’ signs removed from roads in the Highlands. Andy Strangeway from East Yorkshire, a regular visitor to the Highlands and Islands, started lobbying for
8 JULY 2012
their removal last year. The adventurer, who sleeps in remote sites, argued that drivers should be allowed to pull over and rest in roadside lay-bys. A spokeswoman for Transport Scotland said the signs dated
from the 1990s and regulations had changed in that time. The signs would be removed, she added. In 2007, Strangeway completed an attempt to sleep on all of Scotland’s 162 islands of 98.8 acres or larger.
www.britishparking.co.uk
Parking Patches in Brighton would cost about £1.8m, but Bone says the cost could be recouped by the city in the first year of operation because of savings made on personnel and the increased revenue from better-managed parking operations.
The cost to the economy and the environment would also be a factor, with less time wasted searching for spaces and less vehicle emissions. Bone added: ‘The data from the sensors would help to set parking prices to make sure vacant spaces are used.’ The product, developed by his company Deteq
Solutions, is undergoing testing, and Bone has said that he hopes to market it worldwide.
The spot, in a private garage in downtown Manhattan, costs the same as paying for a parking ticket every day for 24 years, and around six times the price of an average family home in the United States. At 12-feet wide, 23- feet long and 15 feet high, the buyer has the option of installing a lift to turn the space into a ‘duplex,’ enabling them to park two cars at once. The $1 million
(£630,000) spot comes with its own deed and the buyer will have to pay maintenance fees.
It is expected to be sold to a resident of the six-apartment luxury condominium, which is being developed above it in a pre-war loft apartment building. Parking spaces in garages below apartment buildings are highly prized in Manhattan, where on- street parking is hard to find and expensive. Dolly Lenz, of real estate agent Prudential Douglas Elliman, said of the $1m space: ‘It’s for someone who wants complete privacy. ‘You can drive in and not be seen again. It’s for the type of person who finds that attractive, such as a camera-shy celebrity or business person.’
Urvi Shah /
shutterstock.com
Songquan Deng /
shutterstock.com
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