If you want to unravel the history of parking spaces and the size of today's traffic lanes, you have to rewind the clock back to Roman times. We know that the Romans liked to think in terms of standards. They made standard weapons, they threw standard bricks, they had a standard army, and they had standard roads. If you are towing by animal power, the easiest way to hitch two horses, oxen, donkeys in front of a cart, they have to fit together. These animals have an average tail width of 60-70 cm. Obviously, we had to allow for some of this to allow for the two animals to fit together, so we multiply 70 cm by two and add 20 more to give 170 cm. In comparison, the wagon can be a little wider, about enough to allow the animals to carry the load and to keep the vehicle manoeuvrable. This gives an approximate width of almost 2 metres, which is roughly how wide animal-drawn vehicles were. Accordingly, Roman roads were typically about 4 to 6 metres wide, i.e. wide enough to allow two carts travelling in opposite directions to pass each other. This width ensured that two people could sit side by side on the trestle. They could take turns driving the vehicle, or while one was driving the vehicle, the other could navigate, orientate and watch out for potential hazards. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
The dimensions of animal-drawn vehicles are inherited from automobiles, so the average car is about 180-200 cm wide. The standard parking space in Hungary is 2.5 m wide and 5.5 m long. In some cases, this width can be reduced to 220-230 cm. Typically in places where, where it is more expensive to create a parking space, for example, in a car park, in a shopping centre, where we are not just talking about an outdoor surface parking space, parking spaces are often narrower than 250 cm. And why is this interesting?
In recent years, the average width of cars without mirrors has reached 180 cm, with an average increase of 1 cm every 2 years. For example, the current Golf, the seventh model, is 19 cm wider than the first generation. There are several reasons for this increase in size. One is safety. Cars on the road in Europe have to comply with more and more safety requirements, and simply need more space in the car for safety equipment and crash-absorbing spaces. Some of these technologies are increasing the length of cars, but for aesthetic and proportionality reasons, the width of longer cars also needs to be increased. It is also worth noting that the average size of people has increased in recent decades due to better nutritional conditions, so we need more space in the car. There are also economic reasons for increasing the size of carriages. American roads are wider than European roads and their cars are bigger. In many cases, European models have to compete in size with their American counterparts to avoid looking small and overpriced. But while the width of cars is increasing, the width standard of parking spaces is not keeping pace. And even if the regulations did keep pace, it is clear that converting existing car parks would be costly and costly for car park owners.
This is one of the reasons why smart parking solutions make sense. It does not increase the size of parking spaces, but it can optimise the use of parking spaces in time, thereby reducing congestion. One such smart device is YourParking Smart's smart parking blocker. The app can be used to map which spaces are free, so that the utilisation of parking spaces with parking sensors can be optimised, reducing congestion caused by 'shrinking' parking spaces.
Több féle megoldással is szolgálunk a parkolási nehézségek elkerülése érdekében.
