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Parklife

Hmmm..did I park on the Easy Rider or Mad Max level? Photo by CLUI.

I unfortunately wasn’t able to check out the recent show Pavement Paradise: American Parking Space at the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Los Angeles, but I’ve just ordered the compact companion volume and have been flipping through it.

Having read a lot about parking, much of it was familiar to me, but I was still able to glean some odd and interesting facts:

* Parking lot designed is influenced by the average turning radius of vehicles (an inside diameter of 15 feet).

* Lot movement is generally counterclockwise so that right-hand turns can be made without crossing lanes.

* By the year 1961, 38% of downtown L.A. was parking lots.

* 24 inches between vehicles is the recommended minimum (the average space is 7 feet, nine inches’ wide).

* Spiral ramps are more dangerous than other configurations.

* The “dump time,” or the amount of time it takes to empty a major lot (like after a concert) should not exceed one hour, or drivers will get nervous.

* Retail parking is typically three times the size of the retail itself.

Also, parking-heads should not miss the excellent short film by Ryan Griffis of the Temporary Travel Office.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Parking, Traffic Wonkery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

Please send tips, news, research papers, links, photos (bad road signs, outrageous bumper stickers, spectacularly awful acts of driving or parking or anything traffic-related), or ideas for my Slate.com Transport column to me at: info@howwedrive.com.

For publicity inquiries, please contact Kate Runde at Vintage: krunde@randomhouse.com.

For editorial inquiries, please contact Zoe Pagnamenta at The Zoe Pagnamenta Agency: zoe@zpagency.com.

For speaking engagement inquiries, please contact
Jenna Meulemans at the Knopf Speaker Bureau.

Order Traffic from:

Amazon | B&N | Borders
Random House | Powell’s

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Traffic UK
Drive-on-the-left types can order the book from Amazon.co.uk.

For UK publicity enquiries please contact Rosie Glaisher at Penguin.

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