Heathrow T2 car park takes off

Best New Car Park: Heathrow Terminal 2 Short Stay

Heathrow Terminal 2’s massive car park has over 1,500 parking spaces and its control room now looks after more than 23,000 parking spaces across the airport. Terminal 2 was opened in June 2014. Located right next to terminals 1 and 3, the new £2.5 billion Terminal 2 building – known as The Queen’s Terminal – is in the heart of the airport. It offers an array of shops, restaurants and a very high specification car park. Built adjacent to the terminal, the 1,500-space Short Stay car park is designed to offer a seamless transition from The Queen’s Terminal’s Departures and Arrivals halls via a series of pedestrian plazas.

Heathrow Airport Ltd (HAL) was keen to ensure that the car park operated without hitch from day one. Like the check-outs, baggage systems and restaurants in the terminal, the car park was extensively tested, with ‘as live’ parking exercises being conducted over the six months running up to the opening in June 2014. This enabled HAL and its management contractor APCOA Parking (UK) to see how drivers behave and ensure that the systems work. 

The car park features innovations in its construction, operations, technology and customer services. “The project was always going to challenge the status quo of parking technology and modular construction head on,” says HAL project manager Steve Bogg. “The resulted in the most advanced surveillance parking technology and the production of the thinnest precast concrete plank ever seen in the UK.”

Ordinarily, the use of a thicker deck slab allows the number of columns to be minimised, optimising the number of revenue-generating parking spaces. At Terminal 2, however, a modular construction process, overseen by Laing O’Rourke, minimised the amount of temporary works and thinner slabs. Using thinner precast concrete meant there was enough height to effectively accommodate an extra floor over the same building footprint. 

Attention has been paid to how the car park interacts with the terminal. The car park’s roof deck acts as the Departures’ forecourt and has been designed to be horizontally aligned with the terminal.?This means when customers arrive on the Departures forecourt they walk straight on to the Departures level. Similarly, when customers exit the Arrivals Hall, they walk straight into Level 1 of the car park, which has the most pay stations.

“The car park has been configured with two things in mind, resilience and the customer, with the latter being at the heart of everything,” says Bogg. “What’s more, speed and convenience is everything, and have been significant in providing an uplifting and seamless customer experience.”

The Short Stay car park at?Terminal 2 is set out on four levels,?which vehicles can access via six entry lanes.?Level 4 is the main entrance. Three of the six entry lanes feed down to Levels 1,2 and 3, while the other three lanes serve the main entrance Level 4 for optimal vehicular circulation.

The car park features a contingency lane located on the?Departures forecourt known as the ‘emergency access lane, which enables customer vehicles to enter the car park in the event of an incident blocking the main entry lanes. This was a scenario tested repeatedly prior to opening.

Egress from the car park is provided via a total of seven exit lanes. There are two vehicle circulation aisles, feeding two sets of spirals located on the outside of the car park – one spiral descends from the entry level on Level 4 down to ground level, while a recirculation spiral takes vehicles from Level 1 to Level 3.

In addition to the main Short Stay car park, there is a dedicated 45-space car park located on the ground level for overheight vehicles, which caters for vehicles up to a maximum height of 3 metres.

Pedestrians navigate the car park levels using green walkways and pedestrian walkways. LED lighting is used throughout all car park levels, and lux levels are always maintained at an optimum. Trolley bays are provided at all car park levels.

A £2.7m fit-out sees the car park feature the latest payment technology, surveillance and lighting, as well as bay monitoring and car finder system. It has been equipped with the latest generation of APT Skidata pay-on-foot technology, which includes payment machines, barrier equipment and control systems. 

Each of the 21 pay-on-foot machines are located in the customer interface areas, a purpose-built area that connects the car park to the terminal building. From here, pedestrian passengers can access car park levels via lifts, stairwells or the escalator. Three ‘late payment’ machines are also located on the ground level, each with a dedicated parking area for unpaid tickets, so customers can pull over and pay for their parking in a safe and secure environment.

The car park has a bay monitoring system that enables the control centre staff to track occupancy by level, view real-time occupancy and space availability. Each of the 1,500 parking bays is equipped with its own individual high-definition overhead camera. These cameras take an image of the parked vehicle and save it to a secure database, which can be accessed in real-time.

The management system enables drivers to be directed to the nearest available bay by a network of variable message signs and lights located above each bay. These shine green when a bay is free. As each bay is filmed, the system can help drivers locate their vehicles on their return to the car park. Customers type their vehicle registration number into any of the 21 Car Finder kiosks to locate the precise location of their vehicle, by level, row and bay. The Highlight parking bay guidance and Baywatch Car Finder services were designed and developed by London-based Highlight Parking.

The Short Stay car park also offers a range of premium parking products, including: Valet Drop-off and Collection, Chauffeur Parking, Fast Track Parking, as well as off-airport services’ Drop-off and Collection. Within the wider service provision, there are also external covered facilities for motorcycles to park, which are offered free of charge.

There are 36 Blue Badge bays, eight on each level, along with 27 parent & child bays. People driving electric vehicles are also catered for courtesy of 23 electric charging spaces and points. Valet customers have been allocated 189 spaces.

The control room at Terminal 2 was designed by APCOA, and is now the main nerve centre of car park operations at Heathrow. Lee Goodes, APCOA’s area manager for Heathrow, says:?‘The control room interfaces with all staff and public car parking facilities at the airport, which collectively house 23,200 spaces. The control room is a 24/7 operation and allows remote monitoring of barriers, pay-on-foot stations and help-points. It is typically manned by four trained operatives who answer around 48,000 public intercoms calls a month. 

“All car park CCTV systems are networked back to the control room, which enables controllers to view customers and car park equipment independently, or automatically, on the intercom being activated by a customer. An enhanced digital radio system enables APCOA’s controllers to communicate to all car park staff across all sites.”

APCOA’s staff have dedicated offices within the car park that includes an air-conditioned kitchen and rest area.

Following the opening of the car park on 4 June 2014, the Queen’s Terminal became home to the Star Alliance – a network of some 23 airlines, including Air Canada, Air China and Lufthansa – as well as three non-aligned airlines Aer Lingus, Germanwings and Virgin Atlantic Little Red.

The car park has been designed with the future growth of the airport in mind. An extension has been constructed along one end of the car park so that when demand goes up, and further car park spaces are required, the car park’s capacity can be increased by the construction company by building new levels without impacting the operation. Ultimately, the car park could grow to have 2,000 spaces and feature an additional vehicular spiral for circulation.