Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Parking Lot shopping experience:
1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Parking Lot offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Parking Lot at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.
2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about
3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Parking Lot? Wrong! If the Parking Lot is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.
4. Questions - Got a question about Parking Lot then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....
5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Parking Lot? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Parking Lot and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.
6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Parking Lot wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.
7. Feedback - happy with your Parking Lot then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.
8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Parking Lot site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site
9. Contact - got a question about Parking Lot, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.
10. Payment - ready to pay for your Parking Lot, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.
Parking lot is the North American English term that refers to a cleared area that is more or less level and is intended for parking vehicles. Usually, the term refers to a dedicated area that has been provided with a durable or semi-durable surface.
In
North America, where Automobile are the dominant mode of
transportation, parking lots are a feature of every city and suburban area. Shopping malls, sports stadiums,
megachurches and similar venues often feature lots of immense area.
In British English, parking lots are known as
car parks, a term usually applied to a surface car park, as opposed to a
multi-storey car park. The latter, in North America, goes by several names, the most common being
parking garage.
General information
, Japan
The usual parking lot in North America and
Europe is paved with
Asphalt concrete. Some are paved with concrete. Many are
gravel lots. A few of the newer lots are surfaced with
permeable paving materials.
Parking lots have their own special type of engineering. While parking lots have traditionally been an overlooked element of development projects by governmental oversight, the recent trend has been to provide regulations for the configuration and spacing of parking lots, their
landscaping, and
drainage and Pollution control issues.
Parking lots can be small, with just parking spaces for a few vehicles, very large with spaces for thousands of vehicles, or any size in between. Small parking lots are usually near buildings for small businesses or a few apartments, although many other locations are possible. Larger parking lots can be for larger businesses or those with many customers, institutions such as schools, churches, offices, or hospitals,
museums or other tourist attractions, rest areas, strip malls, or larger apartment buildings.
Some such businesses, institutions, or other buildings may have several parking lots if a single large lot cannot accommodate their parking needs. Large and very large parking fields can be for
stadiums, airports,
shopping malls or shopping centers with multiple businesses, large schools or
university,
convention centers or fair grounds, theaters, workplaces with many employees such as factories, plants, etc., or other large institutions. Often several businesses, offices, apartment buildings, or other institutions may use one or more parking lots in common for their convenience.
Parking lots near businesses, buildings, or institutions are often implicitly understood or explicitly labelled to be for the use of their respective customers or visitors, often with special vehicle spaces for the owners and employees. Parking lots around apartment buildings are often exclusively intended for parking use of their residents, although sometimes separate spaces may be provided for visitors. Such parking for businesses, offices, and residences is often free to the customers, patrons, or residents.
Parking at malls and shopping centers is often free to customers, owners, and employees also. However, in many cases, especially in areas where parking is scarce, one must pay to park in a parking lot. Entry and exit access is often controlled at these type of lots to ensure those parking pay the required fee.
In many congested areas where some businesses lack their own parking areas, there are parking lots where practically any driver can pay a fee to park. These types of parking lots are often effectively businesses in themselves. Some parking lots have parking meters into which coins must be paid to park in the adjacent space.
Some spaces in a parking lot may be marked as "reserved" for certain people, including those who are handicapped. There are often one or more parking spaces for handicapped people, which may be slightly wider, close to the point of entry for the corresponding store or building. Vehicles with handicapped tags may park there, but the non-handicapped are not allowed to.
Although many parking lots are rectangularly-shaped, there are parking lots of all sorts of shapes. A parking lot can be in front or back, on the side of the building it services, or any combination of these, including all around the building, often depending on local
building codes. In a very large parking field, it is easy to get lost or have trouble finding one's vehicle. Such large parking lots often have various sections marked, for example by numbers or letters, to help identify the location.
The area in parking lots is organized into
parking spaces, which are generally marked with paint lines for each vehicle and often contain a
turtarrier, and driving lanes in between so that vehicles can drive into and out of the spaces. The arrangement of the parking spaces relative to the driving lanes can feature perpendicular parking spaces,
parking#Angle parking (most common, especially in large lots), or parallel parking (least common in parking lots, and usually only for a few spaces), or possibly some combination of these.
Large parking lots have multiple lanes with rows of parking spaces between each one. Except for rather small lots, the location of the parking spaces for each vehicle are usually indicated with pavement markings or lines, similar to center lines on streets. A very common arrangement in large parking lots is angle parking for two rows of vehicles between driving lanes, with the parked vehicles facing front to front between the two rows. At the sides of the parking lot, other driving lanes connect these lanes perpendicularly so that a vehicle can drive into and out of the parking lot at designated locations.There may be
speed limits,
stop signs and
crosswalks for pedestrians in large parking lots. Tall overhead lights may illuminate some parking lots at night.
Most spaces in normal parking lots available to the public are sized for vehicles about the size of a car. The spaces are usually arranged assuming the vehicle can back out of the parking space. In many rest areas on highways, long parking spaces are also available for trucks or other vehicles with
Trailer (vehicle), into which they can enter at one end and leave at the opposite end to avoid potentially cumbersome reverse driving.
with capacity tripled by double liftsA common arrangement in paid parking lots is to have a vehicle entry point with a cross gate where an entering driver presses a button to take a stub with the entry time and to open the cross gate for access to the lot. When leaving, the driver would pay at an exit point according to how much time was spent in the lot as determined from the stub.
In order to keep unauthorized people from parking in lots, towing crews sometimes patrol parking lots after business closing hours, especially at night, to tow away vehicles which should not be parked there. After snowfalls in winter, vehicles with
snow plows often clear snow from parking lots, usually after business closing hours and often during the night.
In response the worldwide
intelligent transport system initiative,
Parking Guidance and Information systems have been developed for use in urban areas. These systems use
variable-message signs to direct drivers to car parks with available spaces.
Much of the above discussion also applies to large
parking garages and multi-level parking areas.
Environmental considerations
Runoff handling
Parking lots have certain characteristics that set them apart from roadways in terms of their engineering and operating requirements. The first is that they often cover large contiguous areas with
impermeable paving surface. This means that virtually all of the rain (minus evaporation) that falls becomes runoff. The parking lot must be built to effectively channel and collect runoff. Traditionally, the runoff has been shunted directly into storm sewers, streams, or even
sanitary sewers. However, most larger municipalities now require retention basins to catch runoff to reduce the stress on sewer systems or streamways.
Water pollution
,
New York City with capacity increased by liftsParking lots also tend to be subject to contamination with concentrated spots of pollutants such as motor oil. While motor vehicles on roadways may drip oil, they do so over a large area. Oil drips on parking lots are concentrated enough that they can have a deleterious effect on the water quality of the runoff. Other pollutants, even
brake-lining dust, rust particles, and other particulate materials that settle on the parking lot surface, can be a similar problem. Therefore, an important second function of the retention basin for parking lots is to act as a temporary storage impoundment to allow particulate materials to settle out and to slow or even prevent the release of other pollutants into waterways.
In some places, the water is not channeled into retention basins, but into
dry wells.
Alternative paving
An alternative solution today is to use
permeable paving surfaces, such as brick, Rock (geology), special paving blocks, or tire-tread woven mats. The intent of these is to allow rain to soak into the ground through the spaces inherent in the parking lot surface. The ground then may become contaminated in the surface of the parking lot, but this tends to stay in a small area of ground, which effectively filters water before it seeps away. This can however create problems if contaminants seep into groundwater, especially where there is groundwater abstraction 'downstream' for
potable water supply.
Landscaping
Many areas today also require minimum landscaping in parking lots. This usually principally means the planting of
trees to provide shade. Customers have long preferred shaded parking spaces in the summer, but parking lot providers have long been antagonistic to planting trees because of the extra cost of cleaning the parking lot.
However, parking lots represent significant heat islands and, indeed,
urban heat island in urban areas. The heat from paved areas in urban zones has been shown to even have the power to change the weather locally. By providing trees or other means of shading parking lots, the heat and glare resulting from them can be significantly reduced.
Services
Some parking lots includes rechargable battery.
Parking standards
Many municipality have established minimum numbers of parking spaces as part of zoning, depending on the floor area in a store, or the number of bedrooms in an apartment complex. Minimum spacing standards are also set for parallel, pull-in, or diagonal parking, depending on what types of vehicles are allowed to park in the lot or a particular section of it. At least one entity prohibits backing in to certain spaces.http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/safety/parking/Parking-parkingrules.htm More recently with the drive to sustainable communities, authorities in the UK have moved to maximum standards to discourage car use and other negative environmental consequences associated with parking lots.
Legal issues
The
United Kingdom has two types of car parking: either on public or on private land. The difference is that the police will investigate any reported accident on public land but have no legal obligation and will not do it on private land. Public road is defined by the
Road Traffic Act 1988http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_19880052_en_8.htm#mdiv192 as: "Road", in relation to England and Wales, means any highway and any other road to which the public has access, and includes bridges over which a road passes. There is also a House of Lords judgment to this matter. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199798/ldjudgmt/jd981022/clarke01.htmAn accident on private land is entirely a private matter and needs to be investigated privately. However,
Closed-circuit television-footage and possible access barrier recording does not need to be handed to a private victim of an accident.
In the United States, each state's
Department of Transportation sets the proper ratio for handicapped spaces, while certain circumstances may demand more. Those in possession of the proper ID tags or license plates are also free from parking violation tickets for running over their metered time or parking in an inappropriate place, as some disabilities may prohibit the use of regular spaces.
References
Parking lot is the
North American English term that refers to a cleared area that is more or less level and is intended for parking vehicles. Usually, the term refers to a dedicated area that has been provided with a durable or semi-durable surface.
In
North America, where
Automobile are the dominant mode of transportation, parking lots are a feature of every city and suburban area. Shopping malls, sports stadiums,
megachurches and similar venues often feature lots of immense area.
In British English, parking lots are known as
car parks, a term usually applied to a surface car park, as opposed to a
multi-storey car park. The latter, in North America, goes by several names, the most common being parking garage.
General information
, Japan
The usual parking lot in North America and Europe is paved with Asphalt concrete. Some are paved with
concrete. Many are
gravel lots. A few of the newer lots are surfaced with
permeable paving materials.
Parking lots have their own special type of engineering. While parking lots have traditionally been an overlooked element of development projects by governmental oversight, the recent trend has been to provide regulations for the configuration and spacing of parking lots, their
landscaping, and drainage and Pollution control issues.
Parking lots can be small, with just parking spaces for a few vehicles, very large with spaces for thousands of vehicles, or any size in between. Small parking lots are usually near buildings for small businesses or a few apartments, although many other locations are possible. Larger parking lots can be for larger businesses or those with many customers, institutions such as schools, churches, offices, or hospitals,
museums or other tourist attractions, rest areas, strip malls, or larger apartment buildings.
Some such businesses, institutions, or other buildings may have several parking lots if a single large lot cannot accommodate their parking needs. Large and very large parking fields can be for
stadiums,
airports,
shopping malls or shopping centers with multiple businesses, large schools or
university,
convention centers or fair grounds, theaters, workplaces with many employees such as factories, plants, etc., or other large institutions. Often several businesses, offices, apartment buildings, or other institutions may use one or more parking lots in common for their convenience.
Parking lots near businesses, buildings, or institutions are often implicitly understood or explicitly labelled to be for the use of their respective customers or visitors, often with special vehicle spaces for the owners and employees. Parking lots around apartment buildings are often exclusively intended for parking use of their residents, although sometimes separate spaces may be provided for visitors. Such parking for businesses, offices, and residences is often free to the customers, patrons, or residents.
Parking at malls and shopping centers is often free to customers, owners, and employees also. However, in many cases, especially in areas where parking is scarce, one must pay to park in a parking lot. Entry and exit access is often controlled at these type of lots to ensure those parking pay the required fee.
In many congested areas where some businesses lack their own parking areas, there are parking lots where practically any driver can pay a fee to park. These types of parking lots are often effectively businesses in themselves. Some parking lots have parking meters into which coins must be paid to park in the adjacent space.
Some spaces in a parking lot may be marked as "reserved" for certain people, including those who are handicapped. There are often one or more parking spaces for handicapped people, which may be slightly wider, close to the point of entry for the corresponding store or building. Vehicles with handicapped tags may park there, but the non-handicapped are not allowed to.
Although many parking lots are rectangularly-shaped, there are parking lots of all sorts of shapes. A parking lot can be in front or back, on the side of the building it services, or any combination of these, including all around the building, often depending on local building codes. In a very large parking field, it is easy to get lost or have trouble finding one's vehicle. Such large parking lots often have various sections marked, for example by numbers or letters, to help identify the location.
The area in parking lots is organized into parking spaces, which are generally marked with paint lines for each vehicle and often contain a turtarrier, and driving lanes in between so that vehicles can drive into and out of the spaces. The arrangement of the parking spaces relative to the driving lanes can feature perpendicular parking spaces, parking#Angle parking (most common, especially in large lots), or parallel parking (least common in parking lots, and usually only for a few spaces), or possibly some combination of these.
Large parking lots have multiple lanes with rows of parking spaces between each one. Except for rather small lots, the location of the parking spaces for each vehicle are usually indicated with pavement markings or lines, similar to center lines on streets. A very common arrangement in large parking lots is angle parking for two rows of vehicles between driving lanes, with the parked vehicles facing front to front between the two rows. At the sides of the parking lot, other driving lanes connect these lanes perpendicularly so that a vehicle can drive into and out of the parking lot at designated locations.There may be
speed limits,
stop signs and crosswalks for pedestrians in large parking lots. Tall overhead lights may illuminate some parking lots at night.
Most spaces in normal parking lots available to the public are sized for vehicles about the size of a car. The spaces are usually arranged assuming the vehicle can back out of the parking space. In many rest areas on highways, long parking spaces are also available for
trucks or other vehicles with
Trailer (vehicle), into which they can enter at one end and leave at the opposite end to avoid potentially cumbersome reverse driving.
with capacity tripled by double liftsA common arrangement in paid parking lots is to have a vehicle entry point with a cross gate where an entering driver presses a button to take a stub with the entry time and to open the cross gate for access to the lot. When leaving, the driver would pay at an exit point according to how much time was spent in the lot as determined from the stub.
In order to keep unauthorized people from parking in lots, towing crews sometimes patrol parking lots after business closing hours, especially at night, to tow away vehicles which should not be parked there. After snowfalls in winter, vehicles with snow plows often clear snow from parking lots, usually after business closing hours and often during the night.
In response the worldwide
intelligent transport system initiative,
Parking Guidance and Information systems have been developed for use in urban areas. These systems use
variable-message signs to direct drivers to car parks with available spaces.
Much of the above discussion also applies to large
parking garages and multi-level parking areas.
Environmental considerations
Runoff handling
Parking lots have certain characteristics that set them apart from roadways in terms of their engineering and operating requirements. The first is that they often cover large contiguous areas with impermeable paving surface. This means that virtually all of the
rain (minus evaporation) that falls becomes runoff. The parking lot must be built to effectively channel and collect runoff. Traditionally, the runoff has been shunted directly into storm sewers,
streams, or even sanitary sewers. However, most larger municipalities now require retention basins to catch runoff to reduce the stress on sewer systems or streamways.
Water pollution
,
New York City with capacity increased by liftsParking lots also tend to be subject to
contamination with concentrated spots of pollutants such as motor oil. While motor vehicles on roadways may drip oil, they do so over a large area. Oil drips on parking lots are concentrated enough that they can have a deleterious effect on the water quality of the runoff. Other pollutants, even
brake-lining dust, rust particles, and other particulate materials that settle on the parking lot surface, can be a similar problem. Therefore, an important second function of the retention basin for parking lots is to act as a temporary storage impoundment to allow particulate materials to settle out and to slow or even prevent the release of other pollutants into
waterways.
In some places, the water is not channeled into retention basins, but into dry wells.
Alternative paving
An alternative solution today is to use
permeable paving surfaces, such as
brick,
Rock (geology), special paving blocks, or
tire-tread woven mats. The intent of these is to allow rain to soak into the ground through the spaces inherent in the parking lot surface. The ground then may become contaminated in the surface of the parking lot, but this tends to stay in a small area of ground, which effectively filters water before it seeps away. This can however create problems if contaminants seep into
groundwater, especially where there is groundwater abstraction 'downstream' for potable water supply.
Landscaping
Many areas today also require minimum
landscaping in parking lots. This usually principally means the planting of trees to provide shade. Customers have long preferred shaded parking spaces in the summer, but parking lot providers have long been antagonistic to planting trees because of the extra cost of cleaning the parking lot.
However, parking lots represent significant heat islands and, indeed, urban heat island in urban areas. The heat from paved areas in urban zones has been shown to even have the power to change the
weather locally. By providing trees or other means of shading parking lots, the heat and glare resulting from them can be significantly reduced.
Services
Some parking lots includes
rechargable battery.
Parking standards
Many municipality have established minimum numbers of parking spaces as part of zoning, depending on the floor area in a store, or the number of bedrooms in an apartment complex. Minimum spacing standards are also set for parallel, pull-in, or diagonal parking, depending on what types of vehicles are allowed to park in the lot or a particular section of it. At least one entity prohibits backing in to certain spaces.http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/safety/parking/Parking-parkingrules.htm More recently with the drive to sustainable communities, authorities in the UK have moved to maximum standards to discourage car use and other negative environmental consequences associated with parking lots.
Legal issues
The United Kingdom has two types of car parking: either on public or on private land. The difference is that the police will investigate any reported accident on public land but have no legal obligation and will not do it on private land. Public road is defined by the
Road Traffic Act 1988http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_19880052_en_8.htm#mdiv192 as: "Road", in relation to England and Wales, means any highway and any other road to which the public has access, and includes bridges over which a road passes. There is also a House of Lords judgment to this matter. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199798/ldjudgmt/jd981022/clarke01.htmAn accident on private land is entirely a private matter and needs to be investigated privately. However,
Closed-circuit television-footage and possible access barrier recording does not need to be handed to a private victim of an accident.
In the United States, each state's Department of Transportation sets the proper ratio for handicapped spaces, while certain circumstances may demand more. Those in possession of the proper ID tags or license plates are also free from parking violation tickets for running over their metered time or parking in an inappropriate place, as some disabilities may prohibit the use of regular spaces.
References
Parking lot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Parking lot (called a car park in Australia and the UK) is a cleared area that is more or less level and is intended for parking vehicles. Usually, the term refers to a dedicated ...
Oakland Raider Parking Lot
Entertaining, outrageous...it's a fitting and stellar addition to the parking lot oeuvre." — John Heyn Director, Heavy Metal Parking Lot (1986)
Park a Lot 2 - Games at Miniclip.com - Play Free Games
Park cars in the correct spaces to keep your job at the parking lot. ... Change speed; Park cars in the numbered spaces. When a customer returns collect the car and drive it to the ...
SafestParkingProducts.com | Parking Lot Safety Solutions
Safest Parking Products is a Canadian supplier of traffic safety solutions, all geared towards helping reduce vehicle speeds in parking facilities.
Parking Lot Art Show - June 23 2007
Parking Lot Art Show - June 23 2007 You need to upgrade your Flash Player to view this site: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/
Parking Lot Stencils
Manufacturers and suppliers of parking lot, pavement marking, industrial, athletic, and custom reusable stencils. Includes online shopping.
Central Arkansas Lot Maintenance
of tranquillity." We define it as a clean & well-maintained parking lot, free of unsightly litter, weeds, cracks, potholes, etc.
LLUAHSC campus: parking lot map
LLUAHSC map with parking lots highlighted ... Visit our new online store for shirts, scrubs and much more...
Rocky Mountain Parking Lot Services
Rocky Mountain Parking Lot Services, Inc. is just that, a parking lot services company for all your parking lot sweeping, striping, and snow removal needs.
Parking Lot Carnival on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Parking Lot Carnival . Would you like to comment? Sign up for a free account, or sign in (if you're already a member). Uploaded on August 13, 2008 by Christopher Ware
