Parking is an essential aspect of just about all properties because of the ubiquity of automobiles in the realm of transportation. Without spaces to leave their cars or trucks, people cannot easily enter your building since they probably arrived there by driving. Thus, the decision of whether to include parking for a building is often not even a question, save for certain urban environments where multiple buildings share parking facilities between them. Due to its significance, you must take good care of your parking area and enact strategies to control and improve user experience within it. In our guide to managing your parking facility, we’ll inform you about the actions you should take to keep your parking facility running admirably for you and your visitors.
Periodic Inspection and Cleaning
People will see the exterior of your building along with its parking area long before they actually make their way inside to where your business or organization operates. It is in your best interest, therefore, to make a good impression in terms of both appearances and utility. Periodically, you should carry out visual inspections that cover the entirety of the parking facility. Then, you can deal with any problems that you notice.
Start by removing any trash, dirt, and dust that you find gathering there and clean stains caused by vehicular oil or perhaps food and drinks when you find them. You can power wash the ground in the parking area to return it to a pristine state and eliminate chemical residues from ice-melting salt that sticks to people’s wheels in the wintertime. Together with the cleaning of your drainage holes, this will prevent the asphalt and concrete from deteriorating as a result of prolonged water and chemical exposure. It’s also vital to check for damaged or burned-out lights and to replace them in a timely manner. This is because your parking facility will seem less secure without proper illumination at night.
Entry and Exit Equipment Examination
The entry and exit point or points of your parking facility are the places where you generate revenue from people and where you ensure that unauthorized individuals do not make their way inside. Some parking lots and garages include staff that oversees the gate, with whom people must interact to get in and come out. At the same time, it is common for machines to control the gates as well. With this equipment, people are able to conveniently receive tickets and pay for parking. Because gate machines do not have personnel nearby at all times, you must examine them to confirm that they are functioning without fault.
You should make sure that the equipment’s ticket containers are not open or unlocked and check that they do not issue more than one ticket at a time. Either of these can lead to wasted or lost tickets, or people wrongfully using lower-cost tickets when they should be using higher-cost ones. Additionally, you should update gate equipment software when needed so that credit card transactions can run smoothly. You don’t want to lose out on revenue or frustrate visitors with a broken machine.
Regulating Who Uses the Facility and When
Your parking area may need to satisfy the various needs of different types of people. To fulfill these needs effectively, you must regulate who uses the facility and when. Usually, you can group spaces based on their proximity to the building. Those spots closest to it should service people who possess handicaps that would make it more difficult to make their way through the parking area. You can also reserve them for those who are performing quick deliveries, drop-offs, and pick-ups. For the latter three groups, you may place a time restriction on parking to ensure that people who don’t need those spaces are occupying them. Medium-range spots can go to regular visitors, and those spots that are furthest away may act as employee parking. Such a system will keep your property more appealing to visitors, which is important for places such as stores and hospitals. If your building is an office where guests are rare, however, you can free up parking for your employees.
Going back to time restrictions, you may want to put limits on your parking area beyond those associated with fast-paced actions. Longer time restrictions of a few hours are useful in busy shopping areas, as they will encourage people to leave when they are done with their activities. This will in turn allow for more people to visit the stores and restaurants there. You may also prohibit anyone from using the parking facility overnight between a specified hour range to discourage those living nearby from using it. You should communicate your rules clearly through signs at the front gate and within the facility. The gate itself can also bar people from gaining entry at times when the entire parking area is closed.
Accommodating Capacity Growth in the Facility
A more long-term facet to parking management is planning for and accommodating capacity growth in the future. You may come to a point where the number of visitors and employees that come to your property on a given day exceeds the quantity of parking spaces you have. The two main issues with this situation are that you may not have more space to laterally expand your parking and it may be too expensive and time-intensive to build more spaces or a completely new parking area. Fortunately, there are several answers to this predicament. You can redraw parking lines to squeeze more spots into the same area while reducing the dimensions of each individual space. There may be edges or corners that you can transform into additional spots with new markings as well.
Technology and valet staff may also help you fit more vehicles into your facility. Mechanical stack parking and semi-automated parking systems are both installable in existing garages and create new spaces vertically. Stackers do need employees who know how to operate them since they must remove vehicles sitting at the bottom before lowering down those above. Coupling mechanical stack parking with valet services can work to great effect for certain businesses, though. To illustrate, visitors will appreciate the fact that they do not need to worry about finding a parking space themselves when they stay at high-end hotels. Semi-automated parking systems are operable for people who return to the building each day such as office employees, as they will have time to familiarize themselves with them.
Having read our guide to managing your parking facility, you may be interested in utilizing mechanical stack parking or semi-automated parking systems to improve your parking facility. If so, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Harding Steel today. We can answer your questions and find the parking solution that works optimally for you.
