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May 22, 2008
With the busy Memorial Day Holiday ahead, travelers will be happy to see a quick and easy way to find open spaces in the parking garage at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport with a new parking floor count system.
The new video analytic project uses a unique system of 88 cameras and 80 new signs to quickly direct travelers not only to the floors with the most available spaces, but also to open spaces within a specific section of rows.
Port of Seattle Information Technology staff modified a similar video system used at a Port Seaport facility to work for the eight-story parking garage at Sea-Tac.
Here's how it works:
Just after the Daily Parking entrances, drivers will see an electronic sign that tells them how many spaces are available on each floor. Once you get to a floor, a sign will tell you how many spaces are open to the left or right. Finally, once you get on a floor, more signs will tell you how many spaces are available within each four-row section.
Throughout the entire garage, 88 cameras record the movement of vehicles. The information is then analyzed by a program which determines how many spaces are available throughout the garage. Overall, the main terminal garage accommodates over 9,000 vehicles on six floors. The lower two floors are currently used by rental car operations.
Memorial Day Holiday Passenger Traffic
As an additional note, Sea-Tac Airport is expecting a pair of its busiest days in passenger numbers due to the Memorial Day Holiday. The largest day will be Friday, May 23rd with over 109,000 passengers projected to travel through the airport. Thursday, May 22nd will be the second highest travel day of the weekend with a projected 105,000 passengers. The rest of the weekend includes Saturday at 85,000 passengers; Sunday, 75,000 passengers; and Monday, 87,000 passengers.
These projected numbers put the weekend in the top third of the airport's busiest days. The busiest days are during the height of the summer travel season in mid-August. In 2007, August 19th was the airport's busiest day with over 111,000 passengers.
More information on parking and other travel tips is posted on this site.