If you own a vehicle, then you would definitely want to have a parking spot it for too. It can be a garage, a carport or just a roadside spot besides your residential premises. However, these spots are primarily used when vehicle owners are not going anywhere. For all the vehicles that are on the move, local administrations, organizations and private contractors have to set up dedicated parking facilities.

These are specialized spaces that are exclusively planned to offer car parking round-the-clock. There are several types of parking facilities that you will come across in any major urban center.

Parking Lots

This is the traditional parking option that you would find alongside many old buildings and other big structures in any given city. These parking facilities are actually part of the overall construction blueprint in which open, adjacent spaces are marked for the accommodation of a certain number of cars. In most of the cases, there are no charges to station your vehicle in parking lots.

Parking Garages

These are purpose-built spaces that are solely set up to provide car parking. Parking garages are a common phenomenon in downtown neighborhoods where individual buildings can’t accommodate the vehicles of all of their employees and visitors. You will find parking garages in different settings. Let’s have a look.

Single-Story Parking Garages: As the name suggests, they only have a single floor to park.

Multi-storey Parking Garages: They consist of multiple floors and is popular in cities where real estate property is in short supply, and vehicle count is increasing all the time.

Underground Parking Garages: These parking facilities are also planned because of space constraints. Underground garages are usually planned with buildings to provide closer parking facility to the visitors. Underground parking garages can be multi-story.

Automated Parking Garages

This might be the most space-efficient parking facility. In automated parking facilities, instead of people, hydraulic and mechanical moving platforms are used to stack up the cars in a space-efficient manner.  Since these parking garages don’t work like regular parking spots, more cars can easily be accommodated in small spaces. Automated parking garages are still very few in numbers, but they will be an integral part of the future smart cities.

Private Parking

All the above-discussed parking facilities are large-scale and can easily accommodate dozens and hundreds of cars. On the other hand, there are some parking spots owned by homeowners in the form of carports and garages.  People with such facilities where they have parking space for more than one car offer these spots on rent.

Such makeshift parking spots don’t just help people who are looking for a parking spot in neighborhoods without a dedicated parking facility, but it also helps the owners to earn some money from the unoccupied and unused portion of their property.

These private parking transactions are usually managed through online portals. People with unoccupied and legitimate parking spots list themselves according to their region/neighborhood. These spots are then available to the drivers looking for a spot in the given neighborhood.

Parking For Me is a similar thriving private parking online portal that operates in nearly every major metropolitan in North America.