After determining approximately how many parking spaces a parking lot should ideally

contain, the designer then moves on to consideration of a number of factors that can
significantly affect the lot's layout and design. These include the obvious considerations of
approximate location of the parking lot on the site, optimal locations for entering and exiting
drives, the desired clustering of handicapped parking spaces adjacent to building entrances,
and the provision of suitably situated truck loading/unloading areas. Other straightforward
design input includes setbacks required from surrounding streets or adjacent properties, and
limitations imposed by site grading, retaining walls, on-site stormwater management areas,
wetlands, preserved landscaping, rock outcroppings, and the like. But other not-so-obvious
parameters can also drastically affect layout and design. Will there be areas of reserved or
preferential parking? Will such areas be gated, or require key-card access? How must the site
layout accommodate a bus stop, pick-up/drop-off areas, projected canopies, or drive-through
services with their queueing lanes? How and where can an ambulance circulation loop easily
enter the site, access building entrances, and depart the site? If required, how would large
fire-fighting equipment maneuver and operate on-site? What would be the optimal circuit for
trash hauling or delivery services? In hot climes, where and how is vehicle or pedestrian
shade provided? Will repair access to underground utilities require tearing up the parking lot?
If a structure might conceivably be subjected to a terror threat, how far must parking or drives
be kept from the building, and how might access be controlled?
Often the consideration of all of these varied determinants results in not one single parking
lot design, but instead a range of parking lot designs, each with its own particular benefits and
detriments. Inevitably trade-offs must be made typically, loss of parking spaces vs. gain of
amenities or benefits, or loss of parking spaces vs. suitable control of costs. But no matter
what kind of parking lot designs (or trade-offs) result, there are certain identifiable universal
'best practices' in parking lot design:
1. The greatest efficiency of layout and use of land area, as well as the greatest overall
parking safety, results from 90-degree parking in double-loaded aisles. That is, everyone
parking must make a 90-degree turn from a drive into a parking space, and every aisle is a
two-way driveway allowing one to park to either left or right from that driveway, where one
will typically come face-to-face with a vehicle parking from the next aisle over. Parking that
is angled from the drive aisle, whether at 60-degrees or 45-degrees or any other angle, not
only consumes more overall land area, but also invites greater driver error and more
accidents. One-way driving aisles are notoriously inefficient, as well as annoying to drivers,
and in fact are prohibited by some communities' ordinances.
2. Lots using 90-degree parking on double-loaded aisles use less land per parked car than
other layouts, thereby reducing not only the distance the average parker must walk to access a
building, but also total stormwater runoff that must be captured and dealt with by sewers and
stormwater management areas, as well as the heat island effect created by an expanse of
asphalt or concrete.

3. Parking lots must also be punctuated regularly. Nearest to each primary building entrance
cluster the handicapped parking spaces, with their attendant access aisles, crosswalks, ramps
and signs. Retail and grocery stores must provide a sufficient number of distributed cart
corrals to rein in their wayward shopping carts. Hotter-climate lots demand regular spacing of
shade trees to cool long-standing cars and long-suffering pedestrians. Most communities
require some green space or landscape interruption of parking seas; throughout much of
Florida such green space or landscaping (internal to the overall parking lot) will consume
10% to 20% of the total parking lot area. Parking lot light poles, electrical transformers, site
utility connections, hydrants, trash dumpster enclosures, ATMs, mailboxes, bicycle racks,
moped parking areas, or pedestrian benches may share or may each command their own
footprint island.
4. Parking lot islands are also essential to smooth and safe internal flow within a parking lot.
An end island (capping the end of a double row of parking spaces) that measures 10' wide x
38' long, with circular-radiused ends, will provide for easy and comfortable turning
movements for any vehicle negotiating its way around that end island. It automatically
creates safe 'vision triangles' at drive intersections, where meeting drivers can suitably
anticipate, see and be seen by one another. It will also afford enough area for landscaping
relief, the placement of one or two shade trees, and some percolation of stormwater into the
earth below. When placed often throughout a parking lot, similarly sized parking lot islands
provide substantial visual and heat relief to parkers and pedestrians alike, and accommodate
the aesthetic embellishment of an effective landscape design.
5. Parking lots work best, and are safest, when they are ringed by a 'cruise lane' or perimeter
drive that 'collects' cars from all the intervening parking lot aisles before dumping them onto
primary drives or surrounding arterial streets. Drives must be ranked and prioritized: the
innermost parking lot aisles have the greatest mutual interaction and intersection, and are
therefore of the lowest speed; intermediate drives can bear slightly higher speeds and
smoother flow only if the numbers of their intersections and interactions are restrained; to
have the greatest safe speed and flow, primary drives must have the fewest intersections and
interactions. When optimized, a parking lot plan should have an apparent order, hierachy and
logic to it.
6. As we ask more and more of our parking lots (and spend more and more ON our parking
lots), parking lot materials continue to evolve. Asphalt gives way to concrete, both so that we
can gain the environmentally-friendly benefits of locally-sourced concrete and incorporated
fly ash, and so that we can increase reflectivity of solar radiation to minimize the heat island
effect that adds to city smog. Permeable pavement materials come into use to allow more
water to percolate through to earth, rather than run off to be collected, piped elsewhere and
treated. A richer palette of colors and landscape materials comes into play for greater beauty
and aesthetic effect, as well as for better sun-shading and more water-conscious plantings.
7. The parking lot edge nearest building entrances deserves the greatest care and attention.
Should its bounding drive have a parallel curbed sidewalk, or should the entire drive edge

merely flare upward slightly through a change of paving material, like an incredibly wide
handicapped ramp (as is now often done at retail store entrances)? How have pick-up/dropoff areas, canopies, handicapped access, emergency vehicle access, and restrictions on
stopping or parking been integrated? Does a building entrance appear more inviting to the
auto than the pedestrian? Are there pedestrian-friendly safe zones at building entrances?
benches? plantings? lighting? bike racks? Only when the designer has provided meaningful
answers to such questions can the parking lot truly be complete.