Feeling the squeeze: Why your vehicle has outgrown its parking space

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The 2018 Lincoln Navigator, Volvo SC60 and Honda Accord are the Detroit Free Press truck, utility vehicle and car of the year. Wochit

So you're in the market for a new vehicle — maybe looking to trade that boring, fuel-efficient sedan for a roomy crossover, or even a big, honkin' pick-up.

Well, why shouldn't you? We're Americans, after all, endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty and 19 cup-holders. Gas prices are hovering near their 10-year low, and we've got all the oil we need just a few miles off our beaches, where the White House has just declared open season for any multinational with a derrick and a dream.

So stop worrying about fuel economy!  You've got bigger fish to fry, such as where in the world you're going to park that noble beast, and whether there'll be room to get out when you do. 

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What's that? You thought the infrastructure would just adjust to your mercurial consumer preferences? You mean the way the jeans you bought five years ago have magically adjusted to your expanding waistline, or the way the case you bought for your iPhone 4 snaps snugly around your new Samsung Galaxy?

Come on, motorist! You know that's not how bigger and better works.  

Whatever you're driving today, the surface lots and indoor garages you park in to go to work, shop or take in a movie were probably built to accommodate what you and your neighbors were driving 20 years ago. 

And while the motoring public's steady migration from passenger cars to crossovers, SUVs and trucks is good news for automakers, whose profit margins tend to expand in tandem with sales of larger vehicles, it's a growing conundrum for businesses whose employees and customers need someplace to stash their rides while they work, shop or dine.

Where three's a crowd

You already suspected this, of course. Your suspicions grow every time you notice a new ding on your back fender, find yourself shimmying into the driver's seat via your passenger door, or drive past a vacant parking place rendered unusable by the super-cabs parked on either side,

It isn't your imagination: There's a growing disconnect between America's vehicle preferences and the spaces in which we're expected to park vehicles.

The more things change, it seems, the more space we need to store them.  

Walker Consultants, which describes itself as a global leader in parking solutions, says the typical modern parking structure is designed around vehicles in the 85th percentile, size-wise, of what Americans are driving.

Thirty years ago, the vehicle in that sweet spot was a passenger car; now it's a Buick Enclave, and Mary Smith, an Indianapolis-based vice president for Walker, says it's virtually certain to keep growing for the foreseeable future.

New wine in old bottles 

Smith says most parking garages in use today were built in the 1970s, nearly half a century ago, and haven't been substantially re-engineered since. Garages and surface lots both repaint their lines from time to time. But almost no one ever changes the dimensions of the standard parking space, Smith says, because zoning regulations typically require retailers to preserve the same number of stalls. 

She says the standard wingspan allotted to each stall -- about 8½ feet, in most municipalities, although garages in the heart of urban centers like Detroit or Ann Arbor sometimes feature snugger stalls -- hasn't changed since 1980, despite the motoring public's growing affection for SUVs, pick-ups and crossovers.

And even if you've never stopped driving passenger cars, you're probably part of the problem, because almost any class of vehicle on the road today is longer and wider than it was 20 years ago.

"A mid-size pickup like the Chevy Colorado is nearly as big as a full-size Ford F-150 was a generation ago," Free Press Auto critic Mark Phelan observes. The same goes for passenger cars: At 70.8 inches, the 2018 Honda Civic is about a half-inch wider than its big brother, the Honda Accord, was in 2000.

The 2018 Accord, by the way, is a full three inches broader across the beam than its 2000 predecessor.

According to Smith, a majority of the new vehicles the federal government classifies as compact cars today won't fit into the "compact-only" stalls most public parking garages set aside for smaller vehicles. 

And even if you've downsized — to a Ford Fiesta say, or a Chevy Spark — the growing proportion of larger vehicles on the road means it's more likely than ever that your frugal econo-box will find itself sandwiched between two full-size trucks or SUVs.  

Making room for technology

Who's to blame this vehicular waistline creep, a phenomenon that seemingly afflicts every class of passenger vehicle on the road? It isn't just that we want more room to stretch out in or accommodate our 65-inch TV purchases, explains Lindsay Brooke, editor-in-chief for Automotive Engineering, the journal of the Society of Automotive Engineers; it's that manufacturers need more room to accommodate the airbags, collision avoidance devices and other safety features that consumers and regulators demand. So the technology that makes our vehicles safer in motion makes them more burdensome to store.  

But robotic technology also offers the most promising prospect for relief from the parking squeeze. At Dusseldorf's international airport, a robo-valet stashes vehicles into storage slots too narrow for human drivers to negotiate and uses real-time flight information to retrieve them in sync with drivers' return flights. Similar automated car parks maximize the use of space by eliminating any need for driver access inside the storage facility.  

And the advent of self-driving cars will make it possible for drivers to summon their own vehicles the way they call a cab or an Uber today, allowing vehicles to drop their owners off and retrieve them farther from the facilities in which they nestle themselves during the day.  

As usual, the first to experience relief will be the affluent who pony up for access to cutting edge technology — and younger workers whose reliance on public transportation or ride-sharing services spares them the proprietary privilege of circling a public garage for hours on end. 

In the meantime, the increasing difficulty of getting in and out of our commodious vehicles may be the unavoidable price of the comfort and security we experience once we're safely inside them.

Contact Brian Dickerson: bdickerson@freepress.com