MID-CITY TERMINALS OF EXPRESS HIGHWAYS
Curb parking of vehicles is generally recognized as a principal cause of the congestion of downtown city streets. The congestion reaches a maximum during the morning and evening hours when the daily flow and ebb of workers' cars are at their height. And the movement of arriving and departing vehicles is impeded by vehicles taking or leaving curb-side parking positions. Typical conditions are illustrated in plate II.
In most cities efforts have been made to ameliorate the greatest congestion by prohibiting rush-hour and all-day curb parking on the downtown streets, or by metering curb parking at rates considered reasonable for short periods but discouragingly high for all day.
Private initiative has contributed a further measure of relief by the provision of off-street parking places. In their simplest and earliest forms these took the form of lots, usually created by razing obsolete and run-down buildings. Located by the chance availability of such property, these lots have not always been suitably placed to meet the parking need.
They are also prepared usually at the least possible cost. Their accommodations for entrance, exit, and sorting are commonly inadequate, and so they often gain an evil reputation for fender smashing and other car damage.
Often unsightly in the extreme and irresponsible in ownership, the manifold defects of many of these places make it impossible to consider them as more than temporary expedients useful until a better and more seemly solution of the parking problem can be provided. Plate III gives views typical of the worst and the best of such parking lots.
More recently a substantial development of off-street parking facilities of a higher type has occurred. In a few instances these have been provided by the municipality. An outstanding example is the underground facility created by the city of San Francisco beneath Union Square Park opposite the St. Francis Hotel. (See plate IV.)
A greater number of the better facilities have been provided by private initiative. In their simplest form they are little more than multi-level parking lots created by the erection of a structure of two or more floors connected by ramps, and wholly without walls. One of these is illustrated in the upper view of plate V.
In their most elaborate form they consist of multistoried garage buildings equipped with elevators or ramps, and manned by a staff of attendants to receive and deliver the cars of patrons at entrance and exit points, and to place and remove them from the parking stalls provided on the several floors. A building of this type is shown in the lower view of plate V.
Between these extremes of the better types of privately provided facilities are others which possess merits warranting the belief that they suggest the prototype of the final best solution of the parking problem. As shown in plate VI these in their present stage of development differ from the simplest form illustrated in one of the views of
