The New Era Begins The Dundrum Town Centre

“Our key objective for the Dundrum Town Centre is to set new heights in terms of customer service levels. The retail offer in the 135000sq m Centre and includes a number of ‘firsts’ for the Irish market. Our attitude to the 10000sq m car park is to treat it as an extension of the Centre in terms of design, lighting and access rather than just a place to store your car. It has been very useful for us to be able to work with DESIGNA and our other design partners who were able and willing to rise to the challenges we threw at them”, reports Don Nugent the Centre Director. Although accessible via Dublin’s new light rail system, the Dundrum Town Centre is located very close to a major motorway and has a capacity of 3,500 underground parking car parking spaces located in two underground linked multi-storey car parks. “Apart from the challenge of getting the expected high volume of cars into and out of the Centre in an efficient manner, parkers need to find an available space close to where they want to go in the Centre as easily as possible and of course afterwards be able to locate their vehicles – all of which needs to happen without stress” comments Tony Whelan, DESIGNA’s Sales and Marketing Director.

To solve the parking related challenges, a group of companies have partnered – DESIGNA, Data Display, Schick Electronic and I-TO-I, each with specific expertise in the required areas. The areas in question are parking revenue control, variable messaging, occupancy & guidance and automatic number plate recognition – all under the leadership of DESIGNA who have a strong reputation for the implementation of complex turn-key integrated parking system solutions. Local Irish project management is being provided by Screenguard with expert installation and commissioning services by Blue Wall Technologies and AGK.

The parking experience will commence on the periphery of the development. Upon approaching the Dundrum Town Centre, parkers will be supplied with real time space availability information via the Variable Message System (VMS) signs which will supply them with occupancy information allowing them to make a decision as to where to enter the car park. Upon taking a parking ticket and entering, additional VMS signage will guide the customer to levels with free spaces and once on the level the parker is guided by user friendly VMS signage which brings the parker into an isle with a free space and subsequently to the free space itself which has been illuminated by a green LED lamp. The occupancy and guidance system is accomplished through the combination of so called bay (or space) detection coupled with VMS technology. The whole time the journey of the car will be tracked by the Vehicle Location System (VLS) by virtue of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology which will supply the parker with information via the parking ticket (following payment of parking fee) as to where the car is parked - should this be necessary. Car park building design elements, such as area and level identification by means of symbols and colours will also be included to make it easier for the parker to remember where the customer has parked. In addition to a free help line, accessible via mobile phone even from within the underground car park and by means of help points, is a proposed information terminal system located around the Centre that will provide the customer not only with general information but also supply the parker with specific information related to the car park and the location of their car.
Work has already begun on the installation of the parking related systems with completion expected by the end of 2004. Phase 1 of the Dundrum Town Centre is scheduled to open for business on March 12th 2005.

More information about the Dundrum Town Centre is available at http://www.dundrum.info.