Parking - Parking Facilities

Parking Facilities

Parking facilities include indoor and outdoor private property belonging to a house, the side of the road where metered or laid-out for such use, a parking lot (American English) or car park (British English), indoor and outdoor multi-level structures, shared underground parking facilities, and facilities for particular modes of vehicle such as dedicated structures for cycle parking.

In the U.S., after the first public parking garage for motor vehicles was opened in Boston, May 24, 1898, livery stables in urban centers began to be converted into garages. In cities of the Eastern US, many former livery stables, with lifts for carriages, continue to operate as garages today.

The following terms give regional variations. All except carport refer to outdoor multi-level parking facilities. In some regional dialects, some of these phrases refer also to indoor or single-level facilities.

• Parking ramp (used in some parts of the upper Midwestern United States, especially Minneapolis, but sometimes seen as far east as Buffalo, New York). Elsewhere, the term "ramp" would apply to the inclines between floors of a parking garage, but not to the entire structure itself.
• Multi-story car park
• Car park (UK, Ireland, Hong Kong, South Africa)
• Parking structure (Western U.S.)
• Parking garage (Canada and USA, where this term does not always distinguish between outdoor above-ground multi-level parking and indoor underground parking.
• Parking building (New Zealand)
• Carport (open-air single-level covered parking)
• Cycle park (UK, Hong Kong)
• Parkade (Canada)

In addition to basic car parking/parking lots variations of serviced parking types exist. Common serviced parking types are:

• Park and ride
• Valet Parking
• Airport Parking
• Meet and Greet Parking
• Park and Fly Parking