Tendencies of Car Parking Systems for
Sofia, Bulgaria
Prof. Assoc., Dr. Vikenti SPASSOV
Chief of Department “Logistics of engineering“
University of Transports “ T . Kableshkov”, 1574 Sofia, BULGARIA
e-mail :
[email protected]tel : +359 2 9709 243 ; +359 2 9709 312 ; fax : +359 2 9709 242
Master eng. Krasimir Krastanov – Ph.D. student
University of Transport, 158 Geo Milev str., 1574 Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail:
[email protected] Tel: +359 2/ 9709 312 Mobile: +359 888/371 692
INTRODUCTION
The limited area in urban zones, the organization and safety
of the increasing traffic have determined the necessity of
construction a new parking systems.
It is very important the dimensions of the automated parking
garages to be optimum in order to ensure full maintenance
of the mechanized systems for parking i.e. optimum usage
of their productivity.
Present parking situation in Sofia
The central city area shows the highest degree of concentration and
also contains the highest concentration of (office) working places.
The parking situation can be characterized by an excessively high
occupancy, inadequate enforcement of the local ordinances that
cannot sufficiently cope with parking problems and parking
behavior in Sofia.
From 22 000 parking places, on average, nearly 21 000 vehicles
occupy these places, implying that the overall parking occupancy in
the inner city is excessively high - 95.4%.
Parking Supply, Demand and Occupancy Rate in the City Center
(During the Average Weekday Daytime Hour)
There are 8 covered parking lots on the territory of Sofia,
which are the property of the city municipality and are
being managed by “Parking lots & Garages”.
Key parameters for the future unrestrained demand in Sofia
are as follow:
- By the end of 2005
23,500 public parking places, which include:
2,500 short-stay parking places
- By 2015
35,250 to 36,850 public parking places, which include:
4,200 short-stay parking spaces
Short Description of the so-called “Blue Zone” in Sofia
- The “Blue Zone” has been established in Sofia since October 1989.
- The “Blue Zone” has around 4000 parking places (425 of them are
official subscription) located in about 25 streets and few squares.
- The short-term paid parking in a “blue zone” is allowed for cars and
small trucks weighing up to 2.5 tons, and vans with up to 12 seats.
- The parking payment is settled in advance by a talon that has to be
put at the windscreen.
- After the “Blue Zone” service was set up, the duration of parking is
shorten from 6.5 hours to 3 hours.
Official subscription
There are 750 parking places used as official subscription and 300
subscribers. Most of the places are located in the “Blue Zone” –
425; 277 ones – in the ‘center zone’ and 48 ones – in the rest of the
city.
Some proposals for solving of parking problems
A good decision is to be built automated parking systems for
cars preferably served by stacker cranes /see fig.1/, that are
the basic element of the automated warehouse systems.
Fig.1
The main advantages of the automated parking systems
served by stacker crane in comparison with other systems
are:
- optimum use of the available space,
- minimum room of a parking automobile,
- no need of platforms and staircases,
- module principle of building, that meets the requirements
of the clients,
- shortening the time needed for building a parking system,
- less time for parking and forwarding because of the high
traveling speed of the stacker crane and simultaneously
vertical and horizontal movement and so on.
A four column stacker crane for long size materials /cert.
No.32903, designed by the Scientific-research laboratory for
material handling machines and systems at the Higher School
of Transport in Sofia and by INTERSKLAD Engineering Ltd,
Sofia /
Fig.2 – Four column stacker crane for long size materials
Optimization of the operating cycle
In general, the theoretical hour productivity of the cyclic operation
machines such as stacker cranes can be determined :
По = N . i = (3600/ Tc ). N , number/h / 1 /
where,
N – number of cars;
i - number of cycles per hour;
Tc - duration of the operation cycle,s
The operating cycle of the stacker crane and its movements can be
illustrated in the diagram on the next figure.
Fig. 3
CONCLUSIONS
The future belongs to the automated parking - garages and the
efforts made in this direction account for the investments.
Automated parking garages are better decision from the social
point of view. For example the owners of cars who park their
cars in parking – automat are forced to pay higher parking
charges.
This is extremely important in order to shorten the time for
servicing a single cell for parking, which is a basic criteria in
building automated parking systems for cars.
Thank you very much
for your attention
