Car Stackers, Don’t Stack up for residential use.
It is not surprising that residents are getting angry and vocal about the techniques used to push development yields beyond reasonable limits…
It has been confirmed that the loading times are not the 20 seconds average explained t o councilors, rather up to 118 seconds plus the time to get in or out and load / unload your cars. Added to that more than 44% of currently selling vehicles will not fit ……(27.1 % SUVs and 17.1% light commercial), and you can bet there will be a lot of cars choosing to park on the street. And in Hepbun st there are only 25 spaces for EVERYONE.
“What a stupid and mindless decision by Manningham Council to approve the use of a car stacker system in the 15 storey apartment development at 20-24 Hepburn Road Doncaster Hill. This allows an increase in Council’s estimated number of dwellings for the site, based on standard basement at-grade parking, from 100 to 188. With a precedent now set for the future use of stacker parking, the approval gives the green light for similar overdevelopments throughout the area. The tenuous infrastructure of the Doncaster Hill Activity Centre, so heavily reliant on neighbouring Box Hill for medical, tertiary education facilities and rail transport, will be overwhelmed with such an increase in population, traffic and parking overspill. While Westfield traders will be delighted with the potential boost to their purchaser catchment, the integrity and independence of Council’s decision making must surely be examined”.
Reg and Mary
The attachment here Apartment assumptions on Doncaster Hill from the Manningham website shows that 20-24 Hepburn Rd was only intended to be half the size now being proposed – half the size is what would be more likely without the car stackers….
Car sales Mix does not fit Stackers…
Percentage Mix
| Month | YTD | Variance +/- Vol. & % | ||||
|
2011 |
2010 |
2011 |
2010 |
MTH |
YTD |
|
| Passenger |
52.7 |
56.6 |
55.5 |
57.0 |
-3.9 |
-1.6 |
| SUV |
27.3 |
23.8 |
23.9 |
22.8 |
3.5 |
1.1 |
| Light Commercial |
17.1 |
16.8 |
17.9 |
17.4 |
0.3 |
0.4 |
| Heavy Commercial |
2.9 |
2.8 |
2.7 |
2.7 |
0.1 |
0.0 |
| Total Market |
100.0 |
100.0 |
100.0 |
100.0 |
0.0 |
0.0 |
4 Comments
One of the key vision objectives of this Council in seeing Doncaster Hill become a ‘Smart Energy Zone’ is supposedly to ‘minimise environmental impacts’. You can understand why we (the objectors to the Hepburn Road development) are left scratching our collective heads at the decision-makers who think that car stackers respond positively to that aim. Councils around Australia are increasingly rejecting car stackers because of their negative impacts on the environment, yet our Council are providing developers with the perfect means to squeeze in more cars, guzzle up energy and exacerbate the traffic issues by adding to the number of cars on our roads! Car stackers are symptomatic of overdevelopment – simple as that – and the community should demand that Council develop a policy on car stackers as a matter of urgency to avoid such blatant abuse of deteriorating infrastructure and resources. This adds further proof that this shortsighted Council approves first and asks questions second (or fails to ask them at all).
I am confused. While car-stackers use power during the motion, they do not use power while idle, while most parking structures I have been in have lights on 24/7. Surely there must be some balance introduced by this. Also, the equipment installed is usually allows for regenerative breaking on the lift mechanisms, meaning that while it costs electricity to lift, you can generate when dropping the car back to ground, or in reverse for below ground stackers.
As for loading/unloading, I live in a building with a stacker and find it’s very quick. I have a friend who lives in a larger building and they have multiple entries and exits to the one stacker, so two people can park while one person retrieves their car.
Lastly, as for SUVs, anyone complaining about the environmental impact of a stacker and then saying they drive an SUV is like saying that it’s not OK for someone else to pollute wastefully, but it’s fine for them to. It seems to miss the point. And, I would hope, given the massive safety issues with SUV-to-non-SUV impacts, and increasing running costs, the silly trend towards them will soon reverse, but that’s my opinion. A stacker can be built to accommodate them, it just hasn’t been.
It seems that the primary complaints are either issues with the implementation of car-stackers in question, not with the concept of stackers in general, with a heavy dose of “Do as I say, not as I do” mixed in.
The consequences of an outbreak of a fire in the car stacker system, especially where they are located on the same level as apartments, could be catastrophic. The conditions of Council’s notice of decision to issue a permit for the proposed 15 storey apartment building at Hepburn Road, which contains 201 cars in stacker format, was not made subject to the provisions of the Fire Authority.
It would appear that Manningham council are compromising the welfare of apartment occupants by not addressing fire safety regulations in their processing of permit applications. According to the Manningham Leader article of the 19th October, 2011, the Fire Authority was forced to go to the extraordinary length of using the Freedom Of Information facility to have Manningham Council make the plans of another major high-rise apartment building available for inspection. Now the MFB is threatening to deny the developers of the 10-storey residential tower, due for completion in April, an occupation certificate. According to an MFB official, the current situation is, after 5 months of discussions, negotiations are “ongoing”. There are concerns the development, which has only one stairwell, does not have appropriate alternative access arrangements and has inadequate water supply pressure for fire fighting.
Barbara C
Barbara,
There is not a single case of a serious fire in a car stacker globally, ever. There has only been one fire and it was insignificant in size. This doomsday fire nonsense has to stop. All of Australia’s fire fatalities occur in domestic environments in lower socio-economic environments where alcohol consumption is high as is smoking. It has been this way for decades, and having cars stacked on top of each other is not going to tip the balance. For once it would be nice to see people in the fire safety industry welcome new technology, not scare everyone with unsubstantiated hazards.
Simon N