Mowasalat is all set to establish a state-of-the-art automated car park in its new Karwa City, which is described to be a first in Qatar and the entire Middle East. Automatic parking is a system that automatically identifies, moves, stores and retrieves cars, offering more parking in less space and providing customers with a high-tech valet parking experience. It is also considered environment friendly and cost-effective. Mowasalat has signed an agreement with the Doha-based Venture Gulf Group for construction, management and maintenance of the facility. Venture Gulf will implement the project with the support of its partner Parkmatic, a US-based company specialising in automated parking. Karwa’s first automated car park can accommodate 50 cars in an area that is needed for 10 cars in a conventional parking facility, it was disclosed in a press conference yesterday, attended by senior officials of Mowasalat, Venture Gulf and Parkmatic. The facility will be dedicated for Karwa’s highly luxurious cars used for the transport of the state’s VIP guests. “This is our first experience in this field and, as such, Mowasalat will study its economic feasibility in a practical way to decide whether it can be used for all other fleet of vehicles in future,” said Ahmed Al Ansari, Mowasalat’s Business Development Manager. He said the facility is expected to be ready by September. Giving a presentation on automated parking, Max Wassef, president of Parkmatic said, the system provides two to three times or more the number of available parking spaces than the conventional parking system. It uses half the space of conventional ramped parking garages, and lower construction costs are involved due to less excavation costs, reduced floor slabs and reduced lighting, elimination of ramps, passenger elevators and staircases. Automated parking is environment-friendly as there will be no exhaust fumes from vehicles driving up and down aisles and ramps looking for a spot. Operation costs are low since automated parking requires less energy to run, claimed Wassef. Since no one enters the garage other than vehicles, it virtually eliminates vandalism, dents, scratches or theft. The customer can leave the vehicle on a waiting platform and step out and then retrieve the vehicle by just swiping an ID card on an electronic machine. http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Local_News&subsection=Qatar+News&month=May2009&file=Local_News2009051962224.xml

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