Over the past two to five years, so many outside forces have caused us to tap the brakes on potential developments, or our approach to them. Autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles, future retrofitting of garages to higher and better uses, COVID-19, demand decreases, demand increases, the increase of transit-oriented developments, and end-of-life of current parking facilities are just a few of the considerations when thinking about a parking facility in your community or on your campus. No matter where you are on that spectrum, you or your organization may be re-thinking the need.

In some cases, a new facility was needed badly due to oversold, over-parked facilities in the area of the proposed garage. In other cases, the facility was thought to be needed because of a new development that it would complement or support. Has that development been put on hold? What now? Maybe we thought autonomous vehicles were going to get here quicker five years ago? Do we need to be thinking about autonomous vehicles as we design and build facilities today, or should those future vehicles use machine learning to navigate the facilities we are designing now for our current customers and communities? 

Has your post COVID-19 demand increased or decreased from previous projections? Now more than ever we must justify the need to build more parking. How much is needed and what type of services and experiences will the facility provide to your constituents?

In a densely built and populated campus or community with little to no land available and the cost of land going up, there is the consideration of possibly building a facility to later retrofit into commercial space or housing units. The need for EV charging has been pushed to the forefront lately. Some cities and campuses have stronger guidance related to EV charging stations. In any case, I think we can all agree that a new facility today should be ready to add on charging stations as the demand increases, but should they be level 2 or fast charging (see Mary Smith’s article in the June edition of Parking & Mobility)?

With construction costs and material costs at an all-time high, we should be thinking about all these considerations and more. Right-sizing a new facility is very important, and predicting future demand as we are still coming out of a worldwide pandemic is not impossible but close.

As you read this column you can quickly see that I have more questions than answers. However, our IPMI community is full of experienced owner/operators and consultants who can guide us as we re-think our current and future needs. 

Lastly, even though we are talking about parking structures, what about phasing it in by designing a gateless surface lot with virtual permits and mobile pay to hold you over until you are confident you need that garage?