Spirit of Place: the Automated Car Park in the Bull Ring

Source

Today a post about a car park, specifically the automated one in the 1960s Bull Ring. You can see it in the top picture: it is behind the long pierced wall. I heard an anecdotal account that this car park was 'never' used because nobody would trust their car to the automated machinery, however I suspected that it was probably used when it was novel and then stopped being used, maybe for the reason of distrust. In short succession I have found a published account of what happened and urbex-style photos of the abandoned car park:

MORE than 40 years ago the Bull Ring shopping centre announced a revolution in car parking.

Owners said they had developed a sophisticated automated system which would see the end of scratched wheel rims and craning your neck as you reversed your vehicle into tight spaces.

Heralded as ‘the future in car parking’ the 1964 scheme, considered the height of high tech at the time, featured a concrete rolling block, which could move Ford Anglias and Austin 1100s into a space – after a fleet of attendants manually pushed the vehicles into a bay.

But – despite the developers’ high hopes – the scheme only lasted for three days.

And the concrete rollers which could have blazed a trail for car parking, if they had worked, were finally demolished when the shopping centre was rebuilt in the early 2000s. Source

So it seems the mechanism didn't work properly and I have also read elsewhere that it was too slow and people wouldn't wait. The article this quote comes from is about the Cube, but there is another automated system, in whatever Beetham Tower is called this week. True to form, it has stopped working and people's cars were trapped inside. You can see a bit of the Bull Ring system working in the video below.

I was delighted to find these pictures of the interior, which I think were taken in the nineties. I am ashamed to say I didn't make a note of where they came from, so if they are yours, please leave a comment or contact me and I will happily attribute or remove them.