Who hasn't parked in a parking lot with lines like this already?


Mathmetician solves puzzle of parking lots

Hey I just thought of a great idea! What if we put peanut butter in a jar at the store, that way we don't have to get messy and deal with weighing it when we grab a handful off the supermarket shelf!

I'll accept cash or check.

Take said Peanut Butter, and Coat it in Milk Chocolate

THE Single Greatest Invention of All Time.

Wow, I thought I was reading the Onion, but no.

And what if we were to slice the bread before we put it in the bag...

What if we looked around at the world instead of our cell phone screen???

I have this idea for potato chips that aren't all broken, I'd shape them so they can stack atop each other and put them in a can.

I think the "new" part is the ability to use a much narrower driving lane. You actually lose a space or two per row with diagonal spots, but if you use a way narrower lane you could gain more lanes total. I don't think I've seen that actually utilized before.

The driving lane has to match the size of the vehicles being driven. All the cars in the original article looked like they'd be called subcompacts here, so they can get by with a 10' wide driving lane. At the local Cabela's the spaces are angled, but with a lot of pickup trucks & SUVs (and sometimes with trailers) you still need a fairly wide lane so they can back out far enough to avoid hitting the car on either side when they turn the wheels. Plus, a car is longer from corner to opposite corner than it is from bumper to bumper, so the length of the spaces perpendicular to the driving lanes will probably be a little longer. It's still far, far better than right angles, though, because the spaces can be made a little narrower.

This is the important part of the article:



It isn't a new idea.

I work for a civil engineer. Anecdotal evidence, I know...

One of matters we care for are parking lots. One of the municipalities that we work for has a 23-page manual solely devoted to designing parking lots. In that manual, it states that for 45-degree parking, they require a 12-foot driving aisle. With 90-degree parking, they require a 27-foot aisle.

So why not run all 45-degree parking? Because for every 7 90-degree spaces you get, you lose 2 if you decide to go 45-degree (rough estimate from a quick sketch in AutoCAD).

Then you have to decide if you are going to allow people to double park or single park, turn both ways to park, have an aisle that allows 2-way traffic, etc. The combinations are endless.

Here are some examples.

45-degree double parking, one-way access:
33�48'16.70"N, 117�55'35.31"W

This is the large parking lot for Disneyland's Downtown Disney. It's scale allows for extra lanes. Also, one-way traffic alleviates the congestion.

Another example of the same, at Six Flags Magic Mountain:
34�25'42.26"N, 118�35'44.99"W

If you don't have the luxury of allowing a lot of one-way traffic (multiple lanes each way, for example, the center portion of this lot, at 36�51'4.64"N, 119�46'34.06"W) then you end up with the situation at the west end of that lot, that requires 90-degree stalls.

The point is that people have been working on this for a long time. Many times the property owners or developers want as many stalls as possible, and if they lose any (even 1 or 2), it's a big, big deal. And the people who design the lots come up with many different possibilities, not just one.

In regards to the original article:



Of course it was repainted with the same striping pattern. It was cheaper and easier to do that then redesign it.

Edit:

I read the comments for the article. Some restore my faith in at least a portion of humanity.

The title is retarded.More efficient way to utilize parking lot space is put into action.The idea that it took a "mathematician" to do this makes everyone retarded.