Car Park Design - Rocket Science? I don't think so!

Yesterday my neighbours took me and my eldest girl to see "Inkheart" at the cinema. Since we hadn't been to the new Vue in Camberley, Jonathan was keen to go and use this new theatre, which boasted of "special" seats for only £1 extra per seat, and beanbags, for only an extra 50p per seat! Wow! As it happens, you really don't want the beanbag seats, because you're crowded at the very front of the auditorium, craning your neck to view the screen above you.

I think, for the beanbags alone, Vue win the "Fleece you silly" award for 2008. They've managed to find a way to persuade people to sit at the front of the auditorium, while simultaneously extracting an extra 50p per person for the priviledge! Awesome!

However, we're not here to discuss the wiliness of cinema chains, but the design of a brand new car park. I will say, right now, that I love going to Basingstoke (I know, who'd ever have thought it?) because I know where to park, I like the shopping centre, and I like the way the cinema is laid out when I get there. I find the car park fairly well designed, for a car park. I'm constantly astonished, however, at the total fuckwittedness of car park design. All in all, despite a certain oddness, the Basingstoke Festival Place car park is OK.

Sadly, however, the NEW car park in Camberley is not. Leaving aside, for the moment, the issue of the wanting to cram into the available space, as many cars as is humanly possible, there are certain laws of physics which were never meant to be broken. One of these laws, I'm fairly certain, although I have to check my "Laws of Physics" book, is that in car parks it's bad to make the cars travelling in different directions use the same piece of road. I'm talking "crossing the beams" bad. This new car park is BAD. While there are two lanes in which you can take a ticket, no-one's ever actually going to use the left hand lane, because in your attempt to avoid impaling your car on parts of the car park, you've already swung out too far to the right, and you're no longer capable of tightening up the turn enough. Similarly, there are two exit lanes, but the left hand one involves a shimmy between some concrete posts I'm not convinced most cars will be able to do.

And let's not even talk about the stupid concrete dividers which are supposed to stop the up-traffic from hitting the down-traffic - to avoid scraping your paint (for the 20th time), you'll find yourself swinging too far out, and either bumping up these dumb kerbs, or jiggling backwards and forwards to make the turn without hitting either the impatient people behind you, or another of the walls.

So why on earth is it so difficult to design a car park that doesn't annoy you. I know it's not - I've seen car parks which don't make me seethe. I suppose the question is - how do you design a brand-spanking new car park so badly. After all, you've got a vacant lot, and you're starting with nothing. You need to stop being so damn greedy, trying to cram in quite so many cars, and design something which isn't going to win the award for "Most Idiotic Car Park Design, 2008".