I don't see the correlation with your comment. Offices take up more space than people, too.
In vids you can see the HQ uses cubes. I could not fit my car into a cube. thus it does not strike me as odd or noteworthy that the parking sf is more than the people sf. In fact it just strikes me as some hair brained attempt to make apple look baaaad.
I guess with the news about pushing their suppliers to renewables, it doesn't look great if most of your signature building is devoted to parking cars. I guess I'll leave it to Apple to square that circle.
Many commute via shuttle busses. It's a non-issue.
I don't see the correlation with your comment. Offices take up more space than people, too.
In vids you can see the HQ uses cubes. I could not fit my car into a cube. thus it does not strike me as odd or noteworthy that the parking sf is more than the people sf. In fact it just strikes me as some hair brained attempt to make apple look baaaad.
I of agree that a cubicle is often smaller than the typical automobile. Besides forcing on the typical office, I was also considering all the area that are used by people in a large workspace. For example, bathrooms take up office space, but we don't need the same for them or any space for a on-site oil changes for automobiles in their parking structure.
It's just a weird comparison. Like you said, to make Apple look bad. All that matters is that the number of parking spaces is the correct ratio for the number of employees to work on site, even with considerations for how much will use other public transportation. For instance, if this was in Manhattan you'd need less parking for that number of people.
Why does it even matter if there's more car space than office space? Does it have something to do with productivity? There seems to be plenty of space at Apple Park and that space seems to have enough room for employees. If Apple eliminated some of that car space for more humans, it wouldn't necessarily improve productivity. Is this office space to parking space ratio something that's questioned about with every company? I wonder why people always have something useless to say in regards to anything Apple does or doesn't do. It's quite likely Apple has all that parking area in order to have enough rooftop solar arrays to provide for that 100% renewable energy. On top of a couple of parking garages seems like a great place to put banks of solar panels.
Most of the parking is underground with a couple of 3 or 4-tier above ground structures. As for the solar arrays, pictures show that they are on the main, circular, 'space-ship' structure while the fuel-cells are hidden away behind landscaping. Very few solar arrays sit atop the above-ground parking structures. What should be great for commuters is that with so much parking space under the structure, you should have no problem finding a spot close to the stairwell leading to your particular part of the ship.
BTW: if you take a look at any large corporation, especially factories, you will note that parking takes up a huge amount of ground space. At least Apple took a more ecological route of parking cars below ground and above ground in tiers to limit impact. I actually prefer underground parking because it is a lot better for the vehicle than having it sit out in the extreme elements of Nature.
So 14000 people, and the local government wants 34% of them to not use cars.
Therefore, the local government makes Apple install 11,000 parking spots, when 9240 would be enough to meet the other rule.
But, that auditorium holds 1000 people, and I can bet they'll all drive in. So they're catered for. And then some more for rainy days where more people come by car rather than bike. And I'm sure there will be hundreds of people coming for meetings every day needing spaces. So it seems reasonable.
A lot of those spots are underground, but those extra garages will come in handy sometime over the next decade when Apple employees start experimenting with ... oh I don't know
This has a real impact on Apple's ability to attract and maintain talent. I personally know four people who either passed on or quit jobs at Apple because of the suburban lifestyle of Cupertino. A huge part of that is "car culture." (All eventually returned to New York City, where they get around on foot, bicycle or subway.)
And the vast majority of people who work in NYC commute there because it is either too expensive or not a pleasant place to live. I'll take the suburban car culture any day. Different strokes.
So, what kind of lawn mower do you have? 😝
Clearly, you haven't lived in New York City. Ever, or certainly not recently.
I'll take easy access to an incredible array of the arts, multi-cultural everything… people, food, you name it, a wide array of job opportunities AND the ability to easily grab direct flights to almost everywhere on the planet, over the living death of the suburbs… where I grew up and got out as fast as I could.
Cars are a scourge on so many levels. It's a shame Apple didn't think REALLY different and look for alternatives.
ha, look like apple need its own design car urgently, not just compete with Tesla or google. better be something better looking than this: http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/08/tech/crab-car-eo-smart-connecting-electric-car/ On the other hand, they can always go to Japan, singapore or Taiwan and take look at the elevator style of parking lot with automation..pricy, but effective.
This has a real impact on Apple's ability to attract and maintain talent. I personally know four people who either passed on or quit jobs at Apple because of the suburban lifestyle of Cupertino. A huge part of that is "car culture." (All eventually returned to New York City, where they get around on foot, bicycle or subway.)
And the vast majority of people who work in NYC commute there because it is either too expensive or not a pleasant place to live. I'll take the suburban car culture any day. Different strokes.
So, what kind of lawn mower do you have? 😝
Clearly, you haven't lived in New York City. Ever, or certainly not recently.
I'll take easy access to an incredible array of the arts, multi-cultural everything… people, food, you name it, a wide array of job opportunities AND the ability to easily grab direct flights to almost everywhere on the planet, over the living death of the suburbs… where I grew up and got out as fast as I could.
Cars are a scourge on so many levels. It's a shame Apple didn't think REALLY different and look for alternatives.
Are you suggesting that Apple's HQ should've been in a metropolis like NYC?
ha, look like apple need its own design car urgently, not just compete with Tesla or google. better be something better looking than this: http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/08/tech/crab-car-eo-smart-connecting-electric-car/ On the other hand, they can always go to Japan, singapore or Taiwan and take look at the elevator style of parking lot with automation..pricy, but effective.
It would be better for them to have a chauffeur service. Rather than have enough parking spaces for each employee to almost be able to bring a car each, they could have a service pick employees up. Say they have a service to pick up at most 6 people at a time in some kind of Minivan, they'd need around 2500 vans and drivers if everyone started at the same time. But the employees wouldn't need to start at the same time so they can cut this down by offsetting the working hours.
So have a fleet of ~1500 vehicles (mix of cars and minivans) 1 driver per vehicle on $30k per year = $60m vehicle cost + $45m/year salaries + vehicle maintenance. Employees would be allowed to use the service for nights out as a perk of working at Apple. Then they can make better use of the land than a giant concrete vehicle storage. Some employees would be able to catch up on work or rest during the commute, it would lower their stress levels going into work and it helps lower income employees avoid having to buy and own their own car. The fleet can be all electric too and at least partially powered by Apple's solar array, which takes a pretty large amount of fossil fuel vehicles off the road.
What is the ratio of EV charging spaces to non-EV spaces? To the extent that the $5B campus is future-oriented, the ratio should be nontrivial.
And that ratio is rather easily mutable by installing more and more charging facilities for existing spaces as demand increases.
That's good to know, especially if 240V is everywhere for Level 2 charging. I now see from Wikipedia that there are initially 300 charging "stations". That may be more than one car per station, but if not, and they are level 2 which draws 7.7KkW, that's at peak > 2MW, a significant portion of the 14MW of solar installed.
And the vast majority of people who work in NYC commute there because it is either too expensive or not a pleasant place to live. I'll take the suburban car culture any day. Different strokes.
Source? According to the census, three million people live and work here, 600,000 come in to work from New Jersey or upstate every day. The notion that "the vast majority commute here" strikes me as both anecdotally wrong and logistically ludicrous.
That number can't be right. The population of the five boroughs of New York City is almost 8.5 million. The population of Manhattan (as of 2015) was 1.6 million. But according to a 2013 report, 7 in 10 people who work in Manhattan commute from another county, but that county could be one of the other boroughs. 400,000 come in from New Jersey alone, so your 600,000 number for commuters does sound correct.
Over the decades, I've been fortunate enough have a parking space whereever I worked. In all but one of those jobs, there weren't sufficient parking spaces on company property for even half the employees to park. That meant street parking unless you wanted to get to work early enough to score a place on company real estate.
This also meant parking violations for a lot of people, if they weren't careful. So while the topic of the article is an odd basis for an article, I'm happy to see Apple providing a lot of spaces, and imagine that few people will be left trying to park when the music stops and the time clock clicks.
problem usually is the shift work. the shift change required 2x, or at least 1.5 x parking spots to complete the rotation. search for parking spot at shift change time is like casino... the place I used to work always shortage of parking during the shift change (you hard to spot any empty space... SUV usually got benefit to be taller than anyone to spot far away empties). choice would be either park in Church parking lot near by (not busy except sunday service) or "in to the woods" and walk half miles or more... crabby bad weather day... But at least it is predictable, not loop around try to play hit and miss game.
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It's just a weird comparison. Like you said, to make Apple look bad. All that matters is that the number of parking spaces is the correct ratio for the number of employees to work on site, even with considerations for how much will use other public transportation. For instance, if this was in Manhattan you'd need less parking for that number of people.
BTW: if you take a look at any large corporation, especially factories, you will note that parking takes up a huge amount of ground space. At least Apple took a more ecological route of parking cars below ground and above ground in tiers to limit impact. I actually prefer underground parking because it is a lot better for the vehicle than having it sit out in the extreme elements of Nature.
Apple is doomed!
iPhone sales will take a hit and Apple Stores across the country will close because of this!!!!!!!!
Hopefully Apple's bike parking takes a leaf from some of the projects in the Netherlands, such as this one: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/utrechts-indoor-bicycle-parking-facility/
Also, is the local city improving infrastructure for alternative transport? Thinking public transit and bicycles
Clearly, you haven't lived in New York City. Ever, or certainly not recently.
I'll take easy access to an incredible array of the arts, multi-cultural everything… people, food, you name it, a wide array of job opportunities AND the ability to easily grab direct flights to almost everywhere on the planet, over the living death of the suburbs… where I grew up and got out as fast as I could.
Cars are a scourge on so many levels. It's a shame Apple didn't think REALLY different and look for alternatives.
On the other hand, they can always go to Japan, singapore or Taiwan and take look at the elevator style of parking lot with automation..pricy, but effective.
So have a fleet of ~1500 vehicles (mix of cars and minivans) 1 driver per vehicle on $30k per year = $60m vehicle cost + $45m/year salaries + vehicle maintenance. Employees would be allowed to use the service for nights out as a perk of working at Apple. Then they can make better use of the land than a giant concrete vehicle storage. Some employees would be able to catch up on work or rest during the commute, it would lower their stress levels going into work and it helps lower income employees avoid having to buy and own their own car. The fleet can be all electric too and at least partially powered by Apple's solar array, which takes a pretty large amount of fossil fuel vehicles off the road.
that there are initially 300 charging "stations". That may be more than one car per station, but if not,
and they are level 2 which draws 7.7KkW, that's at peak > 2MW, a significant portion of the 14MW of solar installed.
This also meant parking violations for a lot of people, if they weren't careful. So while the topic of the article is an odd basis for an article, I'm happy to see Apple providing a lot of spaces, and imagine that few people will be left trying to park when the music stops and the time clock clicks.