This is such a simple idea; it’s simply a way to show if a given parking space in a parking garage is occupied or not, from a good distance away. It’s just using overhead lights – green if the spot is open, red if occupied – but the difference it makes for the act of driving around a parking garage looking for a spot is – and I know this sounds kind of hyperbolic because I’m just talking about a parking garage – dramatic. I’ve discussed this with a few people, and found that while these seem to exist fairly commonly in parking garages in Europe, China, Australia and other places around the world, they’re relatively rare here in America, and I think that should change.
It’s such an obvious solution! And a good one! No more would you be fooled by a tiny Miata nestled between a pair of elephantine SUVs, because the light above the spot would see all you can’t! You could just scan down the aisles overhead, looking for that emerald glow that means there’s safe harbor for your car, covering far more area far more quickly than driving by the rows of cars, desperately scanning.
I actually had never encountered such a thing until I saw this tweet:
Absolute freaking genius. Red/green lights automatically come on for taken/free parking spaces. Never seen this before and makes finding a space so much easier, especially when it’s full of giant SUVs.
???? pic.twitter.com/gaVf7UCR9C
— Tim Oldland (@Tim_Oldland) July 29, 2024
As I talked to people, I found that this actually exists for bathrooms, too:
They use the same system at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport above toilets. pic.twitter.com/K5JiB7cHox
— Peter R. (@PRydlakowski) July 29, 2024
…which is also fantastic, saving people from the bowel-chilling horror of hearing that stall door rattle and clank as you’re crafting your deposit, praying for solitude. 
But! We’re still a car blog, not a bathroom blog (yet), and so let’s stay on these parking spot light things. They seem to be made by a number of companies, with a few different designs. There’s UFO-looking ones that communicate wirelessly to ground sensors, and there’s also systems where the lights are mounted on a common rail, using ultrasonic transducers to determine if the spot is empty or occupied.
Some of these give a strange Christmas-y look to parking garages, with all those red-and-green lights, and that also brings up an interesting flaw with these systems that likely should have been considered, but can also be easily solved.
In reading some other online forums where people like me, formerly ignorant of such systems and now dazzled by them, I found that there was a group of people who could not get the benefit from these setups: color blind people.
Specifically red/green colorblindness, which is the most common kind, affecting 8% of men globally and 0.5% of women. To them, these rows of lights are the same color, and communicate pretty much no useful information beyond the fact that there is electricity in the garage. [Ed Note: These are quite common in Germany, and they use sensors to know when a car is parked. The sensors also tell you how many spots are left on each floor, with the readout on a display — this would still be useful even to colorblind folks. -DT].
But it would be so easy to fix! If the system was changed to leave the lights off if a car is present and only illuminate if the spot is free, then color blind people and everyone else could easily see what spots were open, just by looking for the lights. It would likely save electricity, too, since an occupied spot would have its light off, taking no power (well, assuming it’s a commonly-full lot).
The one thing that may require color is that handicapped spots in many of these systems show up as blue, which is a useful addition. Hopefully, blue should be distinguishable from other light even for people with red/green color blindness.
The main point is that some system like this could make the parking garage spot-finding experience so much better. This feels even more useful than those numeric signs that tell you how many spots are free, because they add the element of location to the system, which is, of course, useful as hell. I mean, you can’t not park in a location, right? It’s a big factor.
I get that there is some initial costs to adding systems like this, and those of you reading this who own parking garages may be reluctant to invest in new equipment, but I think the quality of experience you’ll be giving to your parking customers will be worth it. Look, maybe you eat dogfood for a couple of weeks – I’m okay with that! Especially if that dogfood is Ol’ Roy, which has a Country Stew complete with corn, peas and carrots! Why, with dogfood like this, I bet every parking garage owner will happily upgrade their systems to include visual free parking spot indicators!
Anyway, the parking garage world, especially here in America, has plenty of room for improvement. Simple solutions like this I think would go a long way.
This sounds great until you realize that the sensors break, and it becomes useless. Like at the Terminal 2 parking garage at San Diego International Airport
Beside the facts that these are unreliable and require maintenance, there’s another much more important factor why they were removed from a garage where I park very frequently…
These lights encourage drivers to speed along the aisles to the indicated empty spots.
Once they took them out of the garage I mentioned, it became much safer to walk between your destination and your vehicle. With the lights in place, there were drivers going at least 25mph inside the garage on a daily basis. Unless it was busy, it was genuinely difficult to back out of a parking spot safely.
Removing these lights makes a garage a much safer place to walk and drive. Or maybe Detroit drivers are just that much more savage than anywhere else.
This is exactly my first thought. I already get annoyed when people speed thru parking garages. Also lets have them look at the ceiling instead of down where people/children might appear from between vehicles. Just slow down and look, there is no reason to make this complicated.
Yeah, gotta remember we’re in the US where you can expect the craziest reaction to anything.
I first saw these in Vegas, and loved the idea. They’ve put this system in the garage at the Mall of America and I actually cheered seeing them. People are saying they don’t work, but I’ve never seen an example of them not working in my admittedly limited experience.
They literally never work right.
Also, in one shopping mall parking garage I encountered such system but the light wasn’t assigned to each parking spot but there was a single light every two parking spot pairs. So not only it didn’t work right but also didn’t make sense.
They can work right. I don’t know if it’s because of initial design, equipment choices, installation quality, maintenance or something else, but the ones I use work.
Torch, just go to the main deck at RDU aka Mayberry International. Installed there recently. Seems to work ok.
They are incredibly expensive, and add additional maintenance. That is why. Also it is easier to put them in new garages than operating ones.
There is an Woodbury Commons Outlet mall in NY that has these in the parking Garage, and I agree, these are great.
they got them at the austin airport and that shit is handy. theyve even got little signs on each aisle showing how many open spots are down each one.
Maybe if people parked like decent human beings 100%, sure it’d work.
SFO Long-term parking has them, along with an open-space counter on each floor.
I dropped my family off at the terminal (tons of bags – long trip) and went over to park. None of the green lights were accurate. I finally got to the roof and found a spot in the sun, but could have saved 20 minutes and just parked in the outdoor lot instead of being headfaked for that long.
These lights are installed in the garages some malls around me such as Sherway Gardens and Yorkdale
https://shops.cadillacfairview.com/property/cf-sherway-gardens
https://yorkdale.com/
The *idea* for them is great but the execution is fucking awful, at least in my experience.
A local megamall has them & I couldn’t tell you a single instance where I’ve come across a green light with an unoccupied space.
That mall had them put in a few years ago so it’s not an aging system in need of tuning or refurbishment.
Depending on the system they vary wildly in execution and effectiveness. Some of the more recent ones are essentially license plate reader cameras, that also serve as parking enforcement and revenue generation. But older ones, and ones that are not pay to park, use different sensors that can easily go out of whack in a semi enclosed environment.
Santana Row in San Jose uses this system. I first discovered this while Christmas shopping so it took me quite a while to realize it wasn’t just Christmas lights.
“But! We’re still a car blog, not a bathroom blog (yet)”
What, no morning dump?
I think I’ve seen these in a handful of places around Chicagoland, and I agree, the idea is ingenious and should be in more places. And I imagine there might be ways to retrofit them to existing garages elsewhere when the electrical systems inevitably need repair/updating.
The Fashion Outlets Of Chicago mall (technically in Rosemont) is the first place where I saw this system in action and it is a revelation.
About 10 years ago the University of Houston built a new parking garage. They employed such a system. It was great for all the obvious reasons. Also they were quite cost effective. The light was designed to fit in the end of a standard piece of electrical conduit. The 1/2″ Electrical Metallic Conduit (EMT) extended out from the junction box and did not require any special fittings. Retrofitting existing garage parking lot would be easy to do. Of course you would have to convince the owner(s). Go Cougars!
Think I first saw these at Disney (of course) and Universal in Florida a number of years ago. Makes perfect sense and should be best practice.
First time I encountered these for parking was in the new parking garage at Kansas City International, they also use them in the bathrooms. Very useful in my opinion.
Yes, I’ve seen them there as well, they work good.
I will henceforth reply “I’m crafting my deposit” whenever somebody asks what I’m doing in there.
It makes sense that these would be used in countries actually dedicated to reducing air pollution in congested areas.
I have seen these in Las Vegas casino parking ramps. That is the only place I have seen them so far.
The city owned parking garages in Ottawa use this system, including a sign outside that says how many spots are available and when the lot is full. The accessible spaces have blue lights.
Even better when they have the indicators showing how many open spaces on the entrance to each level and row. However, of the few parking lots in the US I have experienced with these, they have been broken.
Ask anyone who routinely has to rely on these and the answer is:
“they don’t fucking work”
If the car is parked slightly to one side, they lie, if the car is of a certain color, they lie, if the car is too small or too big, they lie. Oh, and if the sensor gets slightly dirty guess what? These things require maintenance, which is something that rarely happens in parking garages.
Unfortunately this is true. These lights are not uncommon in California and I don’t even pay attention to them.
The reason is actually pretty simple: it demands a lot of investment for no objective increased revenue/profit.
In america a vast majority of parking spaces is free of charge.
Exactly. The parking lot owners only care about cash, and by the time you’re inside and able to benefit from these lights, they’ve already got your business. No motivation to give the customer a better experience unless someone can provide objective data that customers will gravitate toward lots that do have the lights more than those that don’t.
I’ve seen these at airports quite a bit over the last few years, but never anywhere else. Also, I have seen it show green over the top of a Miata…