Throughout time most of us have been taught the notion that bigger always means better. The bigger house, the bigger bank account, the bigger car, it’s all a gigantic flex on your neighbor.
However, the world isn’t seemingly able to keep up with that sentiment, as new reports have found that American cars are quickly becoming too big for our parking spaces.
Carl Schneeman is a partner at Walker Consultants, and when he designs is a parking lot or public parking garage, he imagines every spot being filled by the same car, a “design vehicle.”
The size of the design vehicle is calculated by the Parking Consultants Council every five years or so. The group analyzes the U.S.’s car sales data, and calculates the 85th percentile car size, or the size of a car that is bigger than 85 percent of cars sold but smaller than the other 15 percent.
The vehicle Scneeman imagines is six feet seven inches wide and 16 feet 10 inches long, which is the exact width of a Ford’s F-150, the U.S.’s most popular vehicle.
He uses these dimensions to get a baseline for how much space, and how many vehicles the parking lot can hold, and this method has served Schneeman, and the industry as a whole, well over the years.
He’s been able to ensure that these space sizes will accommodate the vast majority of American cars, and leave about 20 inches of space for people to open their doors and maneuver on either side.
Unfortunately, as fast as the size of our vehicles have grown, the parking space standards have barely budged.
While there is no uniform law covering the size of parking spaces, generally most parking spaces are between eight feet six inches and ten feet wide, but the most common size is nine feet (108 inches, with four inch wide lines).
Schneeman says that clients tell him and his colleagues all the time that spaces need to get bigger. “That is definitely something that we are hearing,” he told Motherboard, per Vice.
While the size of vehicles has changed, the formula to find the 85th percentile of vehicle size hasn’t. Schneeman says the size of the 10th percentile car has exploded, the size of the 50th percentile car has grown tremendously, and the size of the 70th percentile car has also grown, but the 85th percentile car is essentially still the Ford F-150, which is much taller and longer than it used to be, but not wider.
Scheeman said that he just received the most recent update to the design vehicle standards but hasn’t had a chance to look it over yet.
“I think if we see a continuance in vehicles getting bigger and bigger, we're gonna have to look at it and say can people reasonably operate? If the vehicle is continuing to get wider, do we need to make an adjustment? I think we will.”
Down the Audacy app and follow 97.1 FM Talk.
Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | TikTok
Related
Related
