Parking Garage Safety Increased By New Innovative BarricAide™ Product That Creates A Safety Zone To Protect Pedestrians

The new Level 1 loading area doubles as the main pedestrian entrance to target and the loading zone where patrons of Target would have the ability to load the items they purchased into their vehicles to be taken home.  This location is considered the only Primary Vehicle Pedestrian Interaction Zone.  To make designing safety solutions for this location even more challenging, it is located in a more confined space being within the parking structure. Typically the loading areas for retail stores like Target are separated from the main entrance and located in a surface level parking lot that has more space.  We had to balance safety, usability and traffic flow when designing the safety solutions for this area. Selecting the right solutions that increased safety without compromising the usability of the loading area or reducing the traffic flow of vehicles into and out of the space was a challenge.  Ultimately, the safety solution package for this location included a combination of bollards, striping and signage to provide clear delineation of vehicle and pedestrian areas and protected safe paths of travel for pedestrians traversing the new Level 1 loading area.  Pedestrians approach from 2 different locations when traversing L1, one is from the elevator bank that connects the different floors of the parking structure and the second is from the ADA required handicap parking spaces located adjacent to the loading zone.  Taking this into account, the layout of the bollards consisted of two different groupings that frame the left and right sides of the loading area.  This helped to delineate the safe paths of travel[2]and provide much needed protection for pedestrians.  At the ingress/egress points of the loading zone, where vehicle access was needed, striping was used in a crosshatch pattern to delineate the pedestrian crossings and alert vehicles of their existence.  Finally, various signage was added to give direction to both vehicles and pedestrians. Any time you have vehicles and pedestrians in close proximity you have a decrease in the level of safety for the pedestrians and there is an increased potential for accidents to take place.