Fact-finding mission Parkhaus Blankenese
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Thursday 17 September 2009 00:47

Tuesday evening I attended the meeting about
Blankenese's city centre. Important part of the
city centre is what is happening around the
refurbished area near the S-Bahnhof and some plans
involving a parking under the market place. Given
the amount of bullshit I heard during the meeting I
decided to investigate. The line of reasoning some
people followed was that the current parking at the
REWE isn't used that much, so there is no need for
another parking under the market place, but there
are still parking and traffic issues that need to
be resolved.

But I think it's still to early to evaluate how
successful Parkhaus Blankenese is. Development in
the area hasn't finished yet, and if the only
argument against a parking under the market place
is the currently perceived failure of the parking
near the REWE, it will be a nasty surprise for some
if that parking concept suddenly turned out to have
gotten successful.

The first issue with Parkhaus Blankenese is that
the area still looks like a construction site. The
stores are already open for over a year, but for
some reason the construction here does soft
launches: Parts are finished and fully functional
but some details are only wrapped up years later,
and there is no big opening so there is no point
after which everyone realizes it's all finished.
That gives the whole place the look and feel of a
construction site, and people get used to behaving
like it's a construction site.

Which means they ignore traffic signs because those
usually don't mean anything while things are under
construction.

So it's easy to park outside in front of the REWE.

The second issue is that Parkhaus Blankenese is not
a single entity, but a complicated set of multiple
parkings. There's a parking for the people living
there to park their cars and two seperate entries
to parkings for shoppers, which isn't all that
straightforward.

Then there is the usability of the entrance. For
Parkhaus 2 you need to do a U-turn, Parkhaus 1 is
one of three choices next to each other, the others
being the entrance to the deliveries area and a
temporary entrance to a construction site.

If you want to enter there are 4 red circles to
make you think twice about going in. Combine that
with the limited height of 2 meters and you'll get
a high bounce rate of people who don't know what to
think of all that and don't enter. Of all the
people driving those big SUVs around Blankenese,
how many of them would realize you'll need
something huge like a Hummer H2 to actually exceed
the maximum height of 2 meters? Most of them are
driving SUVs with a height of only 1.8 or 1.9
meters, but probably just don't know the exact
height or don't want to risk anything close to
that, and just park outside in front of the REWE.

Parkhaus Blankenese has potential, and every now
and then there are incentives to park there and
shop at the REWE. But that is where it get's
complicated. There are paper print-outs that
contradict other messages and the look and feel of
the whole system doesn't make it appear reliable,
or very understandable. You'll be juggling two or
three separate cards just to get out of the
parking?

Once you get into the system it appears to be
something that has some though behind it. You can
enter the parking, take the elevator up to the
REWE, do your shopping there, get your ticket
validated, take the shopping cart in the elevator
down to your car and leave the parking? That's why
there are three elevators to provide enough
capacity.

But things are complicated. The parking should
still be accessible when the REWE is closed. You're
not supposed to enter the parking without having
your car parked there, and the stairs lead to the
emergency exit of the REWE which can't be used to
enter the REWE. Closed doors aren't the best thing
in combination with the claustrofobic cellar the
underground carpark is.

And there are even two parking levels. The bottom
one currently totally deserted. What is also
strange is that the parking is next to the
S-Bahnhof, but not connected in a way that makes it
convenient to walk from the parking to the Bahnhof.
The whole situation seems rather sub-optimal, but
also a big opportunity to turn into a solution for
the parking pressure in the area.

by Roland van Ipenburg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ipenburg/blog/posts/dull/2009/09/17/fact-finding-mission-parkhaus-blankenese/