Tigers and Cranes

i read “economist” because it’s full of useful information and news without the fluff like the doings of paris hilton or whatever the hell is going on with the celebrities. and, you get a global perspective on things, like this article about parking situation in japan.

JAPANESE traffic cops were until recently a genteel bunch. Confronted with a wrongly parked vehicle, they would just place chalk marks next to the tyres, and return an hour or so later to see if it had been moved before issuing a penalty. But in recent months motorists have faced a new army of private parking wardens who enforce a no-tolerance policy with on-the-spot fines and digital photos taken in evidence.

Shopkeepers, restaurateurs and local businessmen are up in arms. Trade on busy thoroughfares is said to have dropped by 20%. Some businesses have come up with inventive solutions—like the MOS Burger chain that has started taking orders from customers’ mobile phones and delivering take-away meals to the kerbside. Valet parking, previously unheard of in Japan, has begun to make an appearance.

… Average land prices have fallen by more than 80% from their peak during Japan’s “bubble years”. Old wooden houses on 80-square-metre plots sell for as little as ¥15m ($126,000) in Tokyo, or less than half that in big industrial cities like Nagoya or Hiroshima. Once cleared, paved and equipped with car-stackers, such tiny plots can generate around ¥5m ($42,000) a year as car parks. The owners are in no rush to get planning permission to build four-storey houses. They would rather pile up cars, and cash.

i had the pleasure of traveling to san francisco a little while back, and i’m constantly reminded of what a pretty city it is, what with its hills, surrounded by the pacific ocean and the bay, as well as some lovely bridges and great food. in a lot of ways, kobe in japan reminds me a lot of san francisco, although i’m not sure how many hippies live in kobe.

one thing i do not like about san francisco is the parking situation.

i stayed in the lovely nikko san francisco hotel near union square, and as some of you may know, it’s a hotel operated by japan air(JAL). everything was dandy(except my room suddenly lost water at 10 pm) but the parking fee is exorbitant. at usd $40 simoleans per say, it’s a veritable highway robbery in my opinion. but, not wanting to have my car broken into by the san francisco recreational drug users at night, i parked my car across the street at a private garage, for a more reasonable sum of usd $30.

i really like to watch the japanese carousel parking garages whenever i get a chance. well, i guess it’s more of a ferris wheel than a carousel. viz, a car goes in to a sort of a cradle, after which it moves up or down in a type of a vertical conveyor, much as a car would move up and down on a ferris wheel. i suppose this way, one could stack cars on top of one another, an ingenious way to save space in a crowded city. but what happens if a car has leaky engine? but this is japan, of course, and these things simply do not happen. or so i’ve been told.

this particular photo is from sapporo. notice the snappily dressed parking attendants. i thought at first they were parking enforcement dudes, but then i realized they weren’t wearing white gloves.

carousel-style parking garage

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 12:30 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.