Parking Trivia Time 

Right now, because of the pandemic and the #StayAtHome movement, many car parks are left unused. So how about some trivia to get excited about parking there again?

The first-ever parking meter was officially named “Park-O-Meter No. 1”, and was put in Oklahoma on June 16, 1935. The machine charged a fee of five cents per hour. (That’s comparable to the cost of managing 15 parking spaces in Parkalot ????)

Here’s an interesting story: to stop teenagers from loitering in their car park, one of the McDonald’s restaurants in Australia started… playing classical and opera music! It worked – several weeks since the idea was introduced to the restaurant, its manager claimed that there was a noticeable reduction in the number of young people hanging around.

According to a survey by Colliers International, the most valuable rentable parking spots in the world are located, perhaps unsurprisingly, in Central London. The public parking spaces around Trafalgar Square and the City can cost up to an average of £1014 monthly. Other close competitors for this title are the West End and from the other side of the world, Hong Kong, Japan and China.

Probably the most expensive permanent parking spots to buy can be found, also not surprisingly, in New York City. A parking unit (for a single car!) can cost a staggering one million dollars!

Now, a bunch of Guinness World Records:

The world’s largest parking lot can hold 20,000 vehicles and is situated at the world’s largest shopping and entertainment centre, West Edmonton Mall, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Does it take ten minutes to get there by car, and another ten to walk to the entrance? 🙂

The largest underground car park contains 6,652 spaces and is situated at LIVAT Shopping Centre, in Daxing, Beijing, China. It took three years to build! Better write down where you left the car – it must be hard to find it if you forget…

How about some automation? The largest automated parking facility has 2,314 parking spaces and was achieved by Robotic Parking Systems Inc. and Mohamed Abdulmohsin Al-Kharafi & Sons in Al Jahra, Kuwait.

A title of probably the best corporate car park management app goes to Parkalot.io! You can book an onboarding call and sign up for a free trial here.

Start using Parkalot in an hour from now. Allow your colleagues to commute by car, and park on the parking spaces assigned to those who are working from home.For companies that employ less than 100 people globally, we are prolonging the free period to two months. You can make the time of the outbreak safer for your colleagues, and resign afterwards if the system won’t suit your needs. To benefit from this special offer please book an onboarding session via https://calendly.com/parkalot/onboarding