Parking in Waterloo Region

[zanate]

They were saying something on 570 news a few days ago about the region looking into building more parking structures (like the Benton garage) and how to pay for them.  It would be so cool if we could get automated parking garages (even more so if they could be installed underground).  They have lots of them in Japan and they're gaining traction in Europe as well.

I think it's Waterloo that's looking into this in uptown. Underground is a challenge due to the water table, I think.

Any idea why automated garages aren't found much in Canada yet? Is it a cultural or a technical / price issue?

Are we talking automated garages that store and retrieve your vehicle for you?

I would expect those to be significantly more costly in both construction and operation (lots of intricate moving parts don't just keep working on their own) than a plain concrete parking structure people drive in and out of. So until the value of the space taken up by the parking structure becomes so high that condensing it and/or pushing it underground outweighs that cost, or the cost of setting up one of these garages drops lower, I doubt we'll see very many of them here in Canada.