UP TO SPEED

Garage designers are embracing new door designs, for good reason.

As parking professionals know, during the past several decades parking structures have become a major design consideration for architects. Though many facilities are freestanding, a large number of parking garages are attached to buildings in urban areas, the suburbs, or exurbia, prompting designers to give these structures more style.

One iconic example is the 65-story Bertrand Goldberg–designed Marina City Towers in Chicago, Ill., shown in the opening to the 1970s “The Bob Newhart Show.” The building’s 19 floors of exposed spiral parking are clearly visible and integrated into the building’s twin cylindrical design.

For some time, parking structures were seen as minimal stand-alone buildings without human, aesthetic, or integrative considerations, giving parking a poor public perception and frequently disrupting the existing urban fabric. Today, however, many architects, engineers,and planners envision and construct far more attractive facilities that integrate structures better with their surroundings and serve the needs of their users.

The idea behind attaching a parking structure to a building is to provide convenience and security to tenants, employees, and visitors. Though not all buildings offer valet parking—an amenity of the Marina City Towers—an increasing number of parking structures are installing high-speed doors to improve security and convenience and to take advantage of other benefits these doors offer.

Today’s imaginative designs include attention to the doors that provide vehicle access to the building. While barrier gates are common for controlling access to a parking structure, building management for security and sustainability purposes are increasingly considering solid-panel doors, whose speed can fulfill both missions.

In today’s fast-paced world, everyone expects to move faster, and this includes when people want to get in and out of parking structures through the doorway. To hurry people along, high-speed metal slat doors and fabric panel doors are replacing slow solid-panel and rolling-grill doors. Though slower versions are still in use because of their lower cost, designers are discovering the advantages of high-performance, high-speed doors.

High-speed doors can open up to five times faster than conventional doors—some models as fast as 100 inches per second. This speed can have significant effect on a number of parking structure access issues.

Security
Parking structures can be more vulnerable to crime than other sorts of buildings. Their low foot-traffic areas, cars, pillars, and recessed areas provide hiding places and offer temptation for those with crime on their mind.

Garage entrance piggybacking can be a problem, enabling intruders to slip into the building behind an authorized vehicle. A slowly operating door adds to the temptation. The longer the door takes to close, the bigger the window of opportunity for unauthorized entrance. Slow doors can be open for many seconds after an authorized vehicle has passed.

Depending on the speed of an entering vehicle and the size of the opening, a high-speed door can be open for just seconds. When the vehicle is clear of the doorway, the building is completely secure. Many high-speed solid panel doors have latching mechanisms at the bottom for an extra measure of security.

Jim Zemski, principal with ZCA Residential, says, “Our firm recommends high-speed overhead doors on all of our urban/residential multifamily garages. This dictates that a high level of security is provided, which is solved by the rapid speed that prevents piggybacking and unauthorized pedestrians from entering the secure garage.”

Sustainability
In Northern-tier states and Canada, a number of attached parking structures provide heating during cold months. At an area of 8 by 10 feet or larger, the doorway provides an ample hole in the wall for air infiltration and costly energy loss. Both parking door speed and design can significantly reduce energy costs. A recent study conducted by the Door and Access Systems Manufacturers Association found that high-speed doors that are accessed frequently would save more energy than heavily insulated doors operating at slower speeds. By cycling in brief seconds, high-speed doors can significantly reduce the loss of heated air.

Once closed, high-speed doors tightly seal the doorway. Doors with anodized aluminum slats have a rubber membrane that covers the connecting hinges; together with a rubber weather seal, this keeps out the elements. This protection combines the seals around the full perimeter of the door, including the door guides that fully enclose the panel’s vertical edges, brush gaskets along the header, and floor-hugging gaskets on the bottom.

Convenience
Americans are always racing to beat the clock, especially in recent years as more demands are placed on their time. People hate to wait to pick up a morning coffee or to get into a parking facility. For people in a hurry, waiting for a slow door to open so they can get into or out of a garage can seem like an eternity. The slow-moving doors at workplace parking facilities can translate into decreased employee productivity. High-speed doors convey a respect for drivers’ time, which adds to the satisfaction with the facility and the business, building owner, or institution associated with it.

Maintenance
Door speed has a significant effect on the door’s useful life and repair costs. The slow speed of conventional doors invites collisions because impatient drivers can rush through the half-opened doorway and clip the bottom of a door that’s not yet fully open. These accidents can
take a door out of action, and worse, damage the car, leading to a very unhappy tenant.

At 60 inches per second or faster, a high-speed dooris too fast for a vehicle to catch up with. At facilities where a driver uses a keypad code and a security card for doorway access, the door is generally fully opened beforethe driver’s foot moves from brake pedal to gas pedal.

Though most high-speed parking garage doors have rigid slats, some facilities are using fabric-panel doors. The fabric-panel doors used at the GID Sovereign at Regent Square project, according to Robert Tullis, vice president and director of design for GID Development, “offer easy repair if they should ever get hit and knocked out of their tracks.”

He notes that his facility maintenance staff can put the fabric doors back in service by simply opening and closing the door, which rethreads the door into its guides. There is no need to call the door repair company, and there are no bent parts to replace. Advanced door controller technology and variable frequency drives on newer doors generate an energyefficient speed curve for smooth motion, soft starting, and soft stopping. These controllers continuously monitor all door activity and cycles and have self-diagnostic capabilities to simplify troubleshooting.

Very few people give much thought to the doors as they enter a parking facility until something goes wrong, either from a security incident or poor door performance. According to Josh Landry with Gables Residential, a developer of high-end multi-unit complexes, “Doors on the parking facility are one of the many items that tenants and owners don’t necessarily think about, but they can be part of the overall positive experience for both tenants and customers.”

MICHAEL WATKINS is vice president of marketing with Rytec Corporation. He can be reached at mwatkins@rytecdoors.com  

TPP-2016-10-Up to Speed

A SOARING SUCCESS

Passengers and staff enjoy a state-of-the-art new parking structure at Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport’s Terminal E Enhanced Parking Structure (EPS) project is a complete update and replacement of existing parking facilities. The new structure was designed to bring aesthetic improvements to an aging infrastructure and increase parking availability, while improving both the overall experience of passengers and operational efficiency of the airlines. Substantial renovations and improvements inside the terminal have been scheduled to accompany the two-year phased EPS project. With a record 64 million passengers in 2015 and a track record for exemplary customer service, the airport challenged project planners to maintain terminal operations and passenger flow during construction.

The project goals were:

• Provide passengers with a modern and rewarding travel experience. Replace two aging, low-clearance, dimly lit garages with one large, well-lit, and efficient modern parking structure.
• Utilize the latest parking technology to improve terminal operational efficiency.
• Optimize passengers’ time spent searching for available parking.
• Create a safe public space through the use of lighting, technology, and a fire protection system that’s easily accessible to DFW emergency personnel.
• Minimize impact to terminal operations and passenger flow during construction.

Challenges and Solutions
The first challenge faced was limited site access with public traffic operating on all four sides of the construction site, 24 hours a day, seven days per week. Solutions implemented were:

• Round-the-clock demolition and haul-off, with work adjacent to roadways occurring during a three-hour nightshift window.
• Use of soil nail wall excavations to prevent public roadway closures.
• Off-site staging and just-in-time delivery of materials.
• Tower cranes with the capacity to reach over adjoining roadways and pick materials from off-site yard and off-load trucks directly from the active roadway shoulder.
• Extensive traffic control planning, including coordination with multiple contractors and airport departments involved in separate terminal renovation projects to properly prepare for thousands of deliveries, crane lifts, and concrete pours while minimizing disturbance to public traffic.

The project required extensive site soil conditioning to bring subgrade to acceptable building standards, including:

• Removal and remediation of old asbestos-containing drainage piping.
• Electrochemical soil injection of native clays over 130,000 square feet to a depth of 10 feet.
• Import, spread, and compaction of more than 20,000 cubic yards of special-fill material.

The project incorporated phased construction and owner occupancy orchestrated with interior terminal improvements, including matching aesthetics/architectural features of adjoining scopes of work. Completion of the first half (Phase 1) of the EPS was concurrent with terminal renovations of corresponding airline gates served by Phase 1 parking area. This ensured that passengers could still park adjacent to their active terminal gates.Phase 1 turnover resulted in increased parking revenue generated mid-project for DFW International Airport during construction of Phase 2. This netted a 12-month head start on parking revenue for the owner.

Innovative Practices
The new garage is state-of-the-art and features multiple innovative features and practices, including a double-helix access ramp between levels. A challenging structural element to construct, the helix access ramp system has proven to be one of the most efficient design features of the EPS. Comprised of two five-story, cast-in-place, post-tensioned concrete ramps that intertwine (one for ascending traffic and one for descending traffic), the helix structure is essentially a series of three-dimensional traffic circles, with vehicles yielding to ramp traffic at each level before entering the helix to access another level of the EPS. This design limits the vertical pathway for vehicles to a much smaller footprint than conventional parking garage ramps that often run the entire length of the garage and have a tendency to get backed up as vehicles attempt to make hairpin turns at switchback locations. The use of the helix system ensures a steady flow of passenger traffic and eliminates traffic jams within the EPS.

The EPS features a parking guidance system that assists passengers in quickly identifying and navigating to available parking spaces after entering the garage. A collaborative network of overhead indicator lights and digital signage directs vehicles to the closest available space (including standard, one-hour, and accessible parking).

As soon as vehicles enter the parking garage, drivers are met with a large digital sign providing accurate and to-the-second counts of available parking spaces on every level of the garage. Within seconds of entering, drivers know whether they should travel to a different level of the garage to find a spot. As vehicles move through the garage, additional digital signs, posted at drive aisle intersections, provide counts of available spaces down each row of parking. Once a vehicle has been directed to a row, its driver can use the overhead LEDs to determine the precise location of an available space.

Each parking space has on overhead sensor that determines if a space is occupied or available. In addition, an LED light is located over each space (at the tail end, adjacent to the drive aisle, so as to be visible to anyone peeking down a row) that switches from green (available) to red (occupied) when activated by the overhead sensor. This provides an extremely efficient tool for passengers to find an open spot and get on with their travels.

One of the most exciting applications of the parking guidance system is the ability to use data collected from the overhead sensors and EPS capacity counts to enhance operational efficiency inside the terminal. A feedback loop between the PGS sensors and passenger ticketing kiosks inside the terminal can assist airlines and the Transportation Security Administration by predicting staffing requirements.

A Unique Partnership
DFW International Airport partnered with the North Texas Tollway Authority to equip the airport with overhead and turnstile tolling to charge passengers for daily parking at various terminals. Implemented in late 2013, this system utilizes two plazas—one each at the north and south end of the airport—that act as access gates to the entire airport facility. Passengers take a ticket on the way in or have their TollTag scanned overhead as they pass through the parking plaza.

Once inside the airport, passengers can park in any terminal parking facility they choose. This appears to be a convenient way to pay for parking, but the ingenuity behind the system is much more subtle. When it comes time for passengers to leave the airport, they are able to pull directly out of any of the terminal parking garages, merge with traffic, and exit through either the north or south parking plaza using the overhead or turnstile payment. This means passengers aren’t getting clogged up attempting to exit a parking garage by inserting tickets and credit cards, which is a frequent issue with parking facilities on large campuses with high parking turnover rates. Instead, the point of transaction is moved to the plazas, which have upwards of 18 exit lanes each. The result is a flawless and efficient movement of passengers in and out of the airport’s parking structures.

MIKE ULDRICH, is a project director with McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. He can be reached at muldrich@mccarthy.com  

TPP-2016-10-A Soaring Success