Driving for a place in the sky

A new concept in car-parking is about to be introduced in Ireland - and it looks like a child's Meccano set. Called the Sky Park, the computerised system checks in your car before robot technology takes it away to a space. Payment is made at an automatic station. It could be the end, as we know it, to the frantic search for a space as you spiral ever upwards to the top floor and to forgetting where you left the car in the first place.

An end too to human contact which, on the positive side, will cut out delays and thieving from cars.

All this could be coming to a town near you. Already the coming thing in environmentally aware countries like Sweden, where it was designed and developed, an Irish company called Parking Solutions is hard at work distributing and explaining the system here. Interest is high. The Dublin Transportation Office has given its endorsement and Dublin Corporation's planners and architects are reportedly enthusiastic. Enthusiastic enough, certainly, for Parking Solutions to have submitted a £33 million proposal for 10 250-500 unit car-parks to the Park and Ride Committee.

If Parking Solutions' plans come to fruition, the estimate is that car-parking could cost the commuter as little as 25p per hour.

Ronan Molumby of Parking Solutions Ltd admits to being "absolutely intrigued" by the system. Back in Ireland after 10 years in New York, where he worked as a lawyer, he's studied car-parking, and its solutions. "Mechanised car-parking is about where Sky TV was 10 years ago," he says. "People still have to accept them. But the reality is that they make more sense. I've looked around and totally believe it has to be the way forward. Until we get rid of cars, we've got to go on parking them. Even if we're all driving electric cars in 10 years time, we're still going to need somewhere to park them." Parking Solutions will shortly be submitting a prototype application to the Park and Ride Committee for a site on the south side of Dublin. Ronan Molumby can't say yet where exactly the location is, but says it's small - only 24 spaces - and that the prototype "will give everyone an opportunity to see how it works".

One of the more pleasing aspects of the Sky Park system is the fact that the facade can be designed to blend with the architecture around, which means it doesn't have to look like the concrete mausoleums we've got used to parking our cars in. The complex scaffolding in Sky Park can be erected within granite or brick in whatever architectural facade it takes to preserve the identity of the street or area.

Ronan Molumby says he has seen one with a Georgian front in Budapest. As buildings go, it doesn't take up much space either, needing 35-40 per cent less ground area and 50 per cent less building volume than the conventional multi-storey park, and can be built either above or below ground. Parking, in the Sky Park future, has a painless quality. You simply drive your car into an entry module (which looks like an everyday, household garage) and switch off the engine. The computer checks to make sure there is no one either in the car or entry module and, as you exit and take your ticket, a robot trolley lifts the car to a shelf-like parking spot at different levels. Retrieving your car is also easy. The computer reads your ticket, the robot trolley finds your car and delivers it back to you. The whole thing is designed to take a minute or two. The advantages, as pointed out by Ronan Molumby, are legion. Operating costs are lower than those for a conventional multi-storey. One employee can take care of security and customer service. Cleaning is done by high pressure water jets. There are no lifts and there is no lighting to maintain. Because cars aren't driven to their parking spaces, noise and air pollution is much reduced. The Meccano-like principle also means it can be expanded, or contracted, to tailor it to local needs. The car-park can even be relocated.

Sky Park's proposed arrival in this country is part of a global enthusiasm for the system. The original model was tested and perfected in Hallsgard, Sweden, and Sky Parks now operate in Stockholm, Budapest and Tel Aviv. Still at the planning and construction stage are parks in Mexico, Penang, Dubai, Glasgow and a 600-space model for the Endinburgh International Conference Centre.

On the face of it, it looks like conventional car-parks will be lamented by one body of people only. What will film-makers do? Think of Driver with Ryan O'Neal and All the President's Men; multi-storey and underground car-parks have become one of the great locations for car chases, murders most foul, clandestine meetings; the fail-safe for whatever suspenseful sequence the urban film requires - its unlikely sky parking will have the same appeal.