I am working to bring a revolutionary solution to the automobile parking challenges we have in Somerville, Massachusetts, the most densely populated city in the Northeast US, with over 80,000 people in about 4 square miles.   We are two to four miles from Boston's downtown financial district, MIT and Harvard Square.

"Somerville was completely built out in the late 1800s, before the availability of the automobile and when trolleys provided excellent transportation to Boston and the surrounding area", I was told by Stephen Mackey, President/CEO of the Somerville Chamber of Commerce.

Let's set an example for the region!
Now's the time, with Somerville's new leadership that embraces effective innovation.

The PROBLEM

	"...Any motorist seeking a parking space in the Davis Square area knows that 2, 3, 4 or 5 trips around the periphery of Davis Square is common before a parking space is located...", according to Terry Smith of Somerville's Traffic and Parking Department (in 2005 comments before the Somerville Planning Board on a Davis Square development project).
	"...recent research shows, that over 50% of the traffic in typical downtowns is simply on the road, cruising around the block searching for vacant convenient parking spaces...", according to Don H. Pickrell, Chief Economist at DOT, Volpe Institute, Cambridge, MIT (issued in the Spring edition of ULI’s "Smart Growth"  program  1999).

What a terrible waste!

• waste of people's valuable time
• loss of business - avoidance of the area
• delivery delays
• competiton for a space - sometimes hostile
• pollution from cars' exhausts

The SOLUTION

Apply the best lessons from automated warehouses with their efficiency, safety, redundancy and a well designed, highly usable control system.   Automated parking has been widely successful in Europe and Asia for over fifty years, with simple, safe, reliable and efficient service!   It provides:

From a driver's perspective:
• safe parking - your car is stored inaccessibly to others to drive or pilfer
• personal safety - you no longer need to walk though parking facilities, day or night
• efficiency - your car is left off and retrieved in a few minutes
• weather protection - your car is stored in an enclosed building system - never need to dig it out again


From a facility owner and operator's perspective:
• reliability through redundancy - there is multiple redundancy of every function including on-site power generation
• every direction of motion: in-out, left-right and up-down have multiple, independently moving components
• remote diagnosis and control - every car's location and every part of the mechanism can be seen and controlled by remote support staff 7 x 24 x 365.
• quality - all motors, controls and computer systems are from General Electric FANUC

• The CNN video on Robotic Parking's website
• The History and Operator and User comments
• At the bottom of the same page see the differnce between traditional solutions and Robotic Parking's improved system design
• "Automated Parking: Two-Year Report Card" on the first Robotic Parking facility in the US.