Parking October 2010 - 50

Greener
Reprinted with permission from Issue 34, Architect and Builder magazine The Elder Street Car Park, located in Perth, Western Australia, is a redevelopment and replacement of an existing public parking facility, which consisted of 480 car bays, including five Acrod bays and 19 motorcycle bays. The existing building was demolished in 2009 to expand and modernize the car park for Perth visitors. The new car park has 1,064 cars bays, including 11 Acrod bays, 58 motorcycle bays and 54 bicycle bays, and was completed three months earlier than anticipated. The site area is 6,976 square meters and the total gross building area over five levels is 29,089 square meters. The car park offers caged motorcycle and bicycle bays and top security technology and signage, which has resulted in easier navigation and a safer place to park. The car park is powered by a 17.3kW grid-connected solar power system provided by Solaris Technology. The initial design brief was to provide enough solar capacity to supply around a dozen Electric Vehicle (EV) charging bays. The resultant system will consist of 90 BP Solar 175W solar panels, three 6kW BP Solar/SMA inverters, and a monitoring system that will have the ability to log energy yields, report faults and display live system performance data on a web page. When the car park is not in use, the system will automatically feed any unused power back into the Western Power grid. It is estimated that the system will produce around 27MWh of power in a year, which equates to preventing around 24 tons of greenhouse gases from being emitted into the atmosphere. Based on an estimated typical electric vehicle recharge of5kWh, this solar system would sustain the operation of 14 EV charging points. The system has been designed to accommodate expansion to three times the initial size, accounting for the future addition of another 28 EV charging bays. The City’s total project budget including construction and all operational equipment and fit out was forecast to cost $33,262,713. For the construction component, the Council accepted the tender of $ 27,597,713 submitted by Broad Constructions Services (WA) Pty Ltd. Construction of the facility commenced in January 2009. The project completed in early July 2010, well before the approved extended contract date for practical completion of October 2010. The Elder Street project is the tenth City of Perth (CPP) Parking car park using the Datapark Parking Access and Revenue Control System (PARCS). The seven-year relationship between Datapark and CPP has continually delivered innovative car parking solutions second to none in world. The Elder Street car park has continued this trend, by providing new features such as Smart Car Detection System, pedestrian access by paid ticket for motorcycles and bicycles, CPP Park Card express, as well as the all features experienced at other CPP car parks. The Datapark owned company Intertechnomics, which provides around-the-clock online technical support to Elder Street and all CPP carparks, was instrumental in assisting the City off-street parking staff to prepare their PARCS servers ready for installation immediately after building handover. This preparation allowed the CPP staff to have the PARCS fully operational three days after handover from the construction teams. Trevor Leach, managing director of Intertechnomics, who is also the chief technical officer of Datapark products worldwide, worked closely with the Pat Abernethy, manager of the city’s Off-Street Parking Division and

Perth Car Park Has World Class Features and Offers a

Place to Park

National Parking Association PARKING October 2010

Parking October 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Parking October 2010