Contents

1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 2
2. General Back Ground ........................................................................................................ 3
3. Perspectives on the Parking Lot ....................................................................................... 3
3.1 Design and Construction ........................................................................................... 4
3.1.1 Location ................................................................................................................... 4
3.1.2 Pavement ................................................................................................................ 5
3.1.3 Tree Shade .............................................................................................................. 5
3.1.4 Water Drainage System ......................................................................................... 5
3.1.5 Night light ............................................................................................................... 6
3.2 Operation .................................................................................................................... 6
3.2.1 White Guide Lines .................................................................................................. 6
3.2.2 Unused parking locations .................................................................................. 7
3.2.3 Congestion .......................................................................................................... 7
3.2.4 Name Tags .......................................................................................................... 8
3.2.5 Security ................................................................................................................ 8
3.3 Maintenance and Expansion ..................................................................................... 8
4. Conclusion on our Perspectives ....................................................................................... 9
5. Recommendations .......................................................................................................... 10
6. References ........................................................................................................................ 11

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 1. Introduction

Parking lot is essential part of design and planning of buildings, institutions, public

gathering places, schools and so on. Vehicles have become basic necessities to travel
from place to place. People need a safe space to put their vehicles while they are at

work, at shopping, or say while they are watching a football game in a stadium, visiting

relatives and the like.

Addis Ababa Institute of Technology, formerly called Faculty of Technology, has its own

main parking lot designed at the time the institute was opened. There are other two
areas that are reserved for parking. It has become our interest to study the parking

areas of the institute so as to see their strong and weak sides from a civil engineering
perspective. We have given engineering judgments based on the perspectives we

obtained after carefully visiting the parking areas.

This report is simply the explanation of what our perspectives are from different aspects
of civil engineering namely design, construction, operation, maintenance and expansion
of civil facilities.

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 2. General Back Ground

Addis Ababa Institute of Technology has three sites in the compound for parking

vehicles. The first parking area, which is the main one, has a capacity of holding 60 small
vehicles 14 of which are not almost usable right now. The second parking area that was

built together with expansion project of the institute’s building has a capacity of
carrying 7-10 small vehicles. The third area for parking is used only for vehicles that stay

in the compound for a while. It has a small capacity ranging from 5 to 7 small vehicles
and is located just to the right after entering the compound.

The parking lot system of the institute is of two types.

 The first one is perpendicular type where vehicles are parked side to side. It has a

2.5 meter width and 3.5 meter marked length by white lines for each small
vehicle.

 The second is parallel type where the front face of one vehicle faces the back of
the other. A 5 meter length and 2 meter width is provided for each small vehicle.

This type of parking exists only in the first of the three parking areas mentioned
above and is positioned following the side of the roadway to the parking area.

3. Perspectives on the Parking Lot

In this section both the strong and weak sides of the parking lot of the institute are
mentioned for different points of evaluation from civil engineering perspective.

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 3.1 Design and Construction

The design and construction perspective focus on the following requirements:

3.1.1 Location

The choice of appropriate location for the purpose of parking is the primary concern for

design. The location should be in such a way that it is easily accessible and that it does
not interfere with other services provided around.

 Accessibility:

AAiT has easily accessible parking lot. All the three areas of parking that we mentioned
earlier are easily accessible from the main gates. A different entrance gate is built for

the second parking lot than the usual entrance gate in order to make it easily accessible.
It, therefore, takes less than 30 seconds to reach to each parking lot after entering

compound.

 Interference with other services:

The main parking lot is located to the side of the former library. This used to create
disturbance to those who were studying in the library. We remember when, at times,

the security alarms of vehicles in the parking lot used to disturb us. On the other hand,
the institute is undergoing construction of buildings at the back side of the compound

and trucks enter the compound to deliver construction materials for the site. The only
route that they use to reach the site of construction is via the road way passing through

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the main parking lot. Since the roadway has a small width and vehicles occupy some of

the width while there is congestion, the trucks and construction equipment will face
difficulty to pass through the road way at ease. This has created a temporary problem

till the construction is completed.

3.1.2 Pavement

The parking lot has a finished asphalt pavement which helps it to give a good service.
We have watched the pavement for almost five years and found it to be durable as
there are only minor failures of the pavement structure.

On the other hand, the road way just after entering the main gate is made of stone and

some part of it has begun to fail due to the repetitive passage of vehicles.

3.1.3 Tree Shade

Asphalt pavements have low reflectance response to sun light and absorb much of the

heat. Due to this, the heat sensed around asphalt paved areas becomes higher. The
parking areas of the institute are exposed to this heating due to the pavement’s nature.

In order to overcome this problem, the parking lot is provided with tree shades. This
could be easily seen for a person that makes a visit in the main parking area. The

parking lot is intentionally provided with trees so as to give it a relief from the heat that
that comes from the sun.

3.1.4 Water Drainage System

One of the natures of asphalt paved roadways is that they don’t seep water into the

ground. Due to this nature, the water that comes from precipitation becomes a surface
runoff. The parking lots of the institute have a problem in relation to this. Because they

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don’t have a drainage system that collects and gives a channeled flow, the rainfall water

simply flows on the surface. This has both short and long term negative impacts.

The short term impact is that the water running off hides the white guide lines that

demarcate the distance between two vehicles. As a result, users entering the institute at
the time of rainfall or a little after will not be able to appropriately position their vehicles

between the white guide lines. The water running on the surface also creates a long
term effect on the pavement by eroding it gradually and making it uncomfortable for

vehicles and users of the parking lot.

3.1.5 Night light

Each parking lot is provided with night lights. This is very essential as users who leave
the compound at night will be at ease to freely go to their vehicles and move their

vehicles freely.

3.2 Operation

In the operation aspect of the parking lots of the institute, we developed the following

perspectives.

3.2.1 White Guide Lines

The parking lots have white guide lines that demarcate the space between two vehicles
though not all lines are clearly visible. The invisibility is especially noticed in the main

parking area. At the far end of the parking lot the white lines are completely covered
with soil and sand that came from the construction work at the back side of the

compound. Some other lines are not clearly visible because they were lined before a
long time.

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 3.2.2 Unused Parking Locations

Part of the main parking lot that is covered with sand and soil due to construction is

almost out of service and usually only one of the institute’s buses is parked in it. This
makes the parking lot to lose a potential parking capacity of almost 14 small vehicles.

3.2.3 Congestion

One of the main problems of the parking lots of the institute is that it does not have a

sufficient area for parking the incoming vehicles. This has one main reason behind it.
The service capacity design of the main parking lot only considered the available and

potential users at the time of construction of the school. It was not forecasted that such
an increase of users would come.

This, of course, caused the administration of the institute to take a number of alternative

measures. The first measure was the construction of additional parking area (the one
mentioned as second parking area in the general background section) together with its

own entrance gate. We can say that this measure lived short. Users that work near the
new building used to park their vehicles in the new lot till last year. But, due to fear that

properties of the institute might be stolen via the entrance gate to this new parking lot,
the gate was shut. Because there is no other access road to the parking area, it is

currently not giving a service except for the institute’s bus that park there some times.
This caused additional congestion to the main parking area. The second measure was to

prohibit students from parking their vehicles in the lots. This measure was taken before
four years and is still implemented. Only staff members are allowed to use the parking

areas. The third measure is to reserve the third parking lot for vehicles that temporarily
stay in the compound, like vehicles from 6 kilo main campus and other campuses.

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Prohibiting students from using the parking lots created congestion outside of the main

gate sometimes making it difficult to pass through the pedestrian walk way.

3.2.4 Name Tags

The parking lots of the other campuses of Addis Ababa University have a name tag so
as to reserve the location for that person. This is not adapted in our institute. This

caused the doctors and professors to occupy parking spaces randomly.

3.2.5 Security

The parking lot provides a better security for the vehicles as it is in the compound and

checked by the campus security agents.

3.3 Maintenance and Expansion

The maintenance and expansion aspect of engineering of the parking lots is generally

poor. The white guide lines of the main parking lot are not regularly renewed, some of
the night lights are out of use and no other intensions of expansion are tried to make

the parking lot available for all the society of the institute. On the other hand the stone
roadway just after entering the main gate has never been rehabilitated though it has

begun to show before long time.

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 4. Conclusion on our Perspectives

The perspectives that we developed and mentioned in the report are believably
important for judging the general status of the parking lot of the institute. The cases we

mentioned in each perspective are not all in all problems, nor are they all in all strong
side of the parking lot. At the current time, we have judged the parking lot of the

institute as functional and useable with a fair degree of fulfilling the intended purpose

while it was constructed. But our judgment, based on the perspectives from which we
saw the parking lot, show that the parking lot could face failure in fulfilling its intended

purpose probably in the near future. The reasons are mentioned in detail in the
previous section. Some of the reasons are listed below.

 No measure of expansion and freeing up of the potential spaces is done, though

there is an increase in the number of users.

 The rate of maintenance is poor which causes the deterioration of the service of
the parking lot.

 Lack of drainage system will continue to cause deterioration of the pavement

structure

 Appropriate parking lots for big vehicles like school buses are not provided. This
causes lack of parking site if the congestion due to small vehicles increases.

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 5. Recommendations

Based on the perspectives and judgments that we presented we have come up with our
recommendations for problems that we in the parking lot.

1. Providing a drainage system for the parking lot so as to protect the asphalt

pavement from gradual erosion.

2. Fixing the night lights that are not working so as to give those who leave the

compound at night a maximum freedom.

3. Regular renewal of the white guide lines that demarcate the space between

vehicles.
4. Creating a means to reopen the second gate so as to use the parking that is

located there. In the main parking lot, the area that could not be used due to the
ongoing construction should be cleared from the accumulated sand and soil and

be usable. These two measures increase the current service by a total number of
20 small vehicles.

5. If the number of users still increases, mechanical lifts can be used to hold
number of cars above the ground. This method is adapted in areas where there

is high congestion. A sample figure showing mechanical lifts being used in New
York, Manhattan is shown below.

Fig 1-A parking lot in Manhattan, New York in 2005, with its capacity increased through
mechanical lifts.

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6. References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking_lot
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking

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