London Gatwick has launched a robotic airport parking service
aerospaceglobalnews.com
aerospaceglobalnews.com
https://news.sky.com/story/i-paid-numerous-fines-after-leavi...
Virtually all major cities have a direct rail connection to it, with frequencies from 2x / hour all the way up to 10x / hour. No direct connection? There's probably a one-transfer option running 4x / hour.
It's a five-minute walk from the train platform to the check-in desks. It is closer than the taxi stands or the parking shuttle. It is definitely cheaper than them as well. Level boarding is increasingly common, so there's a good chance you can just roll your luggage onto the train. The trains are generally clean and safe, homeless people and drug addicts on the train are incredibly rare.
If you visit The Netherlands, don't bother exploring other forms of transport until you are absolutely certain that rail transport is impossible. You'll just be wasting money and making things needlessly difficult for yourself.
The way I see it sure you can go everywhere using a less than ideal transport option and manage if you must. But.. why?
Rain here is a fact of life, similar to the UK or Vancouver, Orlando or the Amazon Rainforest. Everyone who uses a bike for transportation here has a good rain jacket. And to put things in perspective, the normal rain seen in the Netherlands is more of a light drizzle and it generally comes in fits and spurts as moist air is pushed inland from the ocean. If you can afford to wait an hour, the rain is probably stopped.
Also, getting to the airport with a bike in the Netherlands is fine! There are nice protected bicycle lanes, a nice parking garage, good connections to neighboring infrastructure and you can always bring your bike down to the train platform if you need to go a bit further. When you live in a country that prioritizes cycling infrastructure, taking a bike is the practical, cheapest, and often fastest way to reach your destination.
Now to end on a point of more agreement, I agree with you that the demonization of AC in much of Europe is silly. Nobody is upset that in Bangkok or Tokyo that every building has AC. For some reason a certain type of European just doesn’t want to adapt and they will fight tooth and nail to prevent others from utilizing their own economic means in order to stay comfortable in their own homes. My home has solar panels and during the summer they produce much more power than I can utilize at one given moment anyway so if I want to run my AC at 400W during the peak heatwave that should be of no concern to anyone.
A lot of people in car dependent regions have forgotten that you can dress for the weather, and that people have been traveling in all sorts of weather for hundreds of thousands of years.
Also, I think some of it is that decent parts of North America are vulnerable to heavy thunderstorms with hail and possible tornadoes, which are very different from the drizzle that Vancouver and Seattle get.
The problem with "but sometimes..." arguments is that the "sometimes" rarely happens. For example, at www.hetregentbijnanooit.nl someone tracked how often it rained during their daily commute of 2x 45 minutes of cycling. Over an 11-year period, 90.3% of the commutes were dry - and that number would be even higher for people with a shorter commute, or those willing to wait a few minutes for the current rain squall to pass. Invest $100 in a luxury rain coat and the problem is solved.
Besides, in a country like The Netherlands the car is the less than ideal transport option! It is expensive, you keep getting stuck in traffic, you have to search for an available parking space, you can't park right at the door of your destination, and so on. For intra-city people movement, a bike is almost always the most convenient option.
Does it sometimes suck? Yeah, of course, but it sure beats getting stuck in traffic every single day.
Humanity invented engine you don’t need to use legs like a peasant. You can enjoy the fruits of civilisation
Do we really owe anyone decrease in our comfort? Is there any reason to do so?
It isn’t a trivial question.
I might have crossed the line from thought provoking to offensive but in my defense it is an easy line to cross
Clothes are not really an ideal solution compared to surrounding yourself with a 4,000 pound piece of machinery that costs $50,000, loses half its value in 3 years, and degrades your mental and physical health.
It’s better to just get in your tanklet. Your little oasis. Home away from home.
That’s how i move nowadays from most point As to Bs. Music, AC, glasses. Perfect privacy. Calmness. Peace.
Kilograms of metal between you and the vicious, antagonistic reality of 2026 AD
It’s not just a car. It is an armor for the times like these.
I'm a lot more scared of car crashes, since in most years they kill more people in the US than firearms do [1], and that's a pretty morbid statistic considering 58% of firearm deaths are suicides. [2] In other words, all those bullets flying at you as you walk down the street are less than half as deadly as driving in your vehicle.
I would encourage you to look in your local newspaper/news website and see how often someone loses their teenager in a car crash versus how often someone loses their teenager to violence on the street. I didn't lose any classmates to violence, but I lost at least one classmate to a car crash.
Here's another exercise: stand at a sidewalk at a traffic light intersection and count how many people in cars are actively on their phones.
The most statistically dangerous thing that happens to people walking is being hit by cars.
Somehow I doubt the Dutch are staring at each other with violent eyes and wishing they could cower away from the sidewalk into the safety of their RAM 1500 Crew Cabs. I struggle to imagine how that would happen: you can't even stare at people as you ride by them in the bike lanes in the Netherlands, the cyclists are going way too fast for that.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5642886/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7988561/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7670332/
[1] https://everytownresearch.org/graph/gun-death-vs-motor-vehic...
[2] https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/new-report-highlights-us-2...
I would rather take my chances on the road than on the sidewalk or on a bus, completely exposed and defenseless. Like a girl from certain bus video.
You mentioned yourself that you can even be hit by a car. Many such cases lately of people driving car into groups of people.
This world is mad and i think you are much crazier than me. It’s one thing to feel it and do something, anything in response. It’s another to pretend like nothing is happening.
This level of fear you describe is not a healthy or reasonable way to live your life and is not a very typical sentiment. A professional can help you figure out where these feelings are coming from and what you can do to manage them.
Sure, there are crazy and violent people out there, I don't deny that.
I know I was being somewhat of an urbanist zealot in my last comment, but for real...regardless of whether you prefer suburbs and spending more time in your car or the city and spending more time on foot, this isn't a healthy way for you to see the world in either case.
Because of that observation, I think it would be wise for you to dig deep on whether something about your own perceptions is failing you in this regard. I think there’s a strong likelihood that either something about your physical appearance looks very different, your own behavior is causing staring, or the staring isn’t happening at all in the way you describe.
Unless you just live in a specific place/culture where staring is prevalent.
I can’t trust your perspective if you have a habit of wearing clown suits around town.
I can’t trust your perspective if you are mistaking a normal momentary glance as a stare and are responding aggressively, exacerbating the problem, and you basically admitted that you escalate these “staring contests.”
I don't stare at people. They don't stare at me either. Problem solved?
Of course I am not saying everyone should be crazy but it is what works for me.
Unbelievably busy bicycle crossing in Amsterdam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQSwQLDIK8
Watching that video soothes my mind and warms my heart: thousands of people who have not Repo Man-style driven themselves unintelligent and insane manage to negotiate the same shared space simply by looking at one another in the eye, and acknowledging that everyone else exists.
The famous Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman believed drivers become more alert and cautious when there’s more uncertainty on the road.
Want fewer car accidents? Remove traffic signals and road signs:
https://bigthink.com/the-present/want-less-car-accidents-get...
>Hans Monderman believed that societies could make roads safer by making drivers more uncertain, and therefore alert.
>“When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots.”
>That was the philosophy of Hans Monderman, the Dutch traffic engineer who became famous not for what he added to road design and urban planning, but for what he removed: curbs, traffic signals, signs. He believed drivers become more alert and cautious when there’s more uncertainty on the road.
>“The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there’s a problem with a road, they always try to add something,” Monderman said to Wired. “To my mind, it’s much better to remove things.”
>According to the anthropologist James C. Scott, Monderman began with the observation that:
>when an electrical failure incapacitated traffic lights, the result was improved flow rather than congestion. As an experiment, he replaced the busiest traffic-light intersection in Drachten, handling 22,000 cars a day, with a traffic circle, an extended cycle path, and a pedestrian area. In the two years following . . . the number of accidents plummeted to only two, compared with thirty-six crashes in the four years prior. Traffic moves more briskly through the intersection when all drivers know they must be alert and use their common sense, while backups and the road rage associated with them have virtually disappeared. Monderman likened it to skaters in a crowded ice rink who manage successfully to tailor their movements to those of the other skaters. He also believed that an excess of signage led drivers to take their eyes off the road, and actually contributed to making junctions less safe.
Unexpected interview in Groningen (Homage to Hans Monderman):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQASVz4xun8
>What? You know all about transport in cities and you have never heard of Groningen? Well, check out this an unexpected street interview in Groningen, a slice of life as lived by our old friend and transport innovating colleague Robert Stussi. He has titled it: A Homage to Hans Monderman. Hear, hear!
Hans Monderman: Rethinking the design of streets and public space:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjBGokenEhQ
>An Urban Design London and Urban Design Group Lecture
>Hans Monderman has been one of the most significant influences on the current debate about the design of streets and spaces in the UK. A traffic engineer and road safety specialist from Northern Holland, he is celebrated as the pioneer of shared space as a means to influence speed and driver behaviour.
>Monderman has been the inspiration behind scores of towns and villages which work without road markings, traffic signs, signals, kerbs, barriers and bollards. ‘Most engineers, when faced with a problem, try to add something,’ he says. ‘My instinct has always been to take something away.’
>Following a short introduction by Rob Cowan, Hans explains his approach, work and experiences.
Hans Monderman talking about Shared Space:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2amDl1Hkl0w&list=PL83763C4BA...
... you do realize that you are also "these fuckers", right? It's like complaining about "being stuck in traffic": no, you are the traffic.
The people on the street are just people. They aren't any different from your coworkers, your family members, or the parents of your kid's classmates. If merely being in the presence of other people causes you serious anxiety, you might want to consider asking a medical expert for potential therapy options before it gets even worse and you're left unable to leave the home at all.
Heck, you could pack a bicycle travel bag and pack your bike itself as checked luggage.
NYTimes Wirecutter has had some decent pannier reviews. I've had good luck with Arkel bags. Ortlieb look pretty bombproof.
Wirecutter: <https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-bike-rack-ba...>
Article: "How To Fly With Bike Boxes & Bags For Touring & Bikepacking?" <https://tomsbiketrip.com/how-to-fly-with-bike-boxes-bags-for...>.
Arkel's "Bug" Pannier Backpack: <https://arkel.ca/products/bug-pannier-backpack>.
(Numerous other models, this might be well-suited to bike-hike touring.)
And that's before you get into tricycles.
If this thing could pick up my car from curbside at arrivals dropoff like a valet, but handle it robotically so there's no valet downside, it would be amazing.
agree that this would be way better if you just drove up in a queue and cars were taken away. one imagines the slow moving conveyors at amusement parks to get people closer to the ride's speed, tho given how long people take to park, get, take off the seat belt, find park, shut off the car, check their faces in the mirror, Find their cell, button their jacket, straighten up other stuff, find the rest of their shit, get out of the car, kiss their loved ones for 10 straight minutes, struggle with the tailgate, get their bats out, realize they forgot their phone, and finally head away from their car... probbably wouldn't work.
I see people take 5 minutes to get their car moving or get out at a grocery store. what they're doing I'll never guess. Car isn't even started for 3 minutes. When I first learned to drive my dad's hard and fast rule was to get the A/C running before anything else (other than insuring the car wouldn't move), the windows could be lowered with your other hand as a secondary.
Machines precisely like this, but manually piloted, are used in automotive plants themselves to move vehicles that fail end-of-line test, had an assembly mishap affecting the powertrain, or otherwise need to be shuffled around when they're not able to move under their own power. As long as it has tires, it can be moved this way.
Stringo™ and DJ CarCaddy™ are some popular brands, if you want to see more of how this type of lift works.
What is the name of the company that built this?
> (probably, given recent AI advances) an incredible time to market
Edit: seems like they got bought out in 2024 by HL Robotics: https://en.hlrobotics.co.kr/
Looks like the answer is (at least for this older system), come in from both sides of the tyre with two separate arms, and have each of those arms have their own little wheels on, so as you move inwards it lifts up the tyre and just rolls your mini wheels a little bit. Clever.
The system in London Gatwick UK is done by Stanley Robotics from France (which was acquired by HL Robotics from South Korea in 2024), but it could be similar.
This kind of stuff has been the norm literally for decades in any major harbor. No AI BS needed.
It's an inconveniently located valet service. But oh, you keep your keys. So it's really an inconvenient tow-truck valet service - or two guys with fork lifts.
The parking buildings were built when cars were smaller than small cars today, and as the passenger count increased, so did the need for more spots, in a 0 sum game. They just split the cake in smaller slices.
This feels like a clever solution to have some spaces closer to the airport and many spaces further away.
What about my comment was wrong? At some point my dad gets to park his car in a garage close to the airport, a robot deals with it. At that point what does it matter if the space is 30 seconds from the garage or 5 miles?
Anyway here's where it is:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/YZKPXp7LSjc5jPot5
Turn on satellite view and you can see it is on the edge of the long stay parking. I dunno if you're realistically going to save a lot of time unless your parking space is right at the back of the long stay car park. Worth it if it's free! I assume it's overpriced though.
But I agree, trying to extract money from people like this is greedy and dangerous.
My experience of the airport flyer has not been at all good.
1 - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/26/water-supply...
As these things go, if the service provider is able to make step one work and the airport continues the partnership, an eventual step would indeed be coming closer to or at the terminal, and the robot scooters (sounds a little like scaled-up warehouse robots) would move the car to storage.
The article says:
> The facility is within walking distance of the South Terminal, although a free shuttle bus is also available.
That's if you know the system, and are aware that you won't find spots on the lower levels, and that the "x spots open" indicators are lying. If you're new, you can spend 30+ minutes on a goose chase, miss your flight etc.
This solves that problem; not the bus one. (If the drop-off location is easy to access; if not, then it's pointless)
A simpler and cheaper solution would be to fix those availability signs. Surely this is not a problem that a few cameras and some smart software couldn't solve.
When I got back I walked past the kiosk that said "type in your license plate and locate your car" for those who forgot where they parked, like I did. Typed it in - no car found. (this was a recent trip, out on 07/23 and back on 07/25)
Systems with eight slots have decent throughout, the same density as cars parked side-by-side and bumper-to-bumper - even including the space needed to roll out - and are mechanically simple compared to just about anything else in this space.
Unless they tell you to switch the alarm system off I guess.
I want to be open minded that I'm missing something, but I can't help but feel like car alarms are just security theater with a side of nose pollution.
"If passengers accidentally leave an essential item in the vehicle after drop-off, on-site staff will be available to retrieve emergency items."
But.. how would they get that emergency item if they don't have the keys?
Assume your car park is a grid of cars, 20 cars wide and 20 cars long, i.e. 400 parking spaces.
You make the entire first row drop-off/pick up points. With 20 pick up/drop off points you can have a lot of people dropping off or picking up at the same time. And you know pretty well when people will be picking up their cars, as you know their flight arrival details.
Assume your average airport parking customer parks for 5 days, that's 80 arrivals and 80 departures per day. Each of your 20 pick-up/drop-off points only needs to handle 4 pick-ups and 4 drop-offs per day. To me that sounds feasible.
Most airport parking lots have thousands of spots so you’d need a lot
At least in my country, airports under-provision infrastructure and ask travellers to arrive 2-3 hours before their flights to make up for it. If a person has to queue for 10 minutes for a drop-off bay to become available, that's just the normal airport experience.
> Most airport parking lots have thousands of spots so you’d need a lot
My point is: If you've got space for a lot of parked cars, you've got space for a lot of drop-off bays. If you've got space to build a car park with thousands of spaces, you've got space to give it hundreds of pick-up spots.
As long as you don't want to use the toilet.
The article says:
"A Stanley Robotics autonomous parking robot then slides underneath the vehicle, lifts it by its tyres and transports it to a secure storage area."
Which seems to suggest this.
In a funny way, this sort of does that. Sure your car still has an engine but this very much is the car-shell tractor, in practice. This is really neat to see.
I wish them luck. I hope it is reliable enough! It looks pretty straightforwards in how it picks up wheels, which is neat.
You just drive up, drop your keys and go, your car is parked in a long line of cars that they can asynchronously drive off to long stay. The key thing is the location - you're a 30 second walk over a bridge into the terminal. Probably a hundred cars can be sitting waiting to be driven off to the long stay at the time, so they can handle the drop off/pick up of many cars at once. Whereas with this solution each "bay" will be occupied for a time while the autonomous robot drives off the previous vehicle, so you either need to over-provision - have many robots servicing a single bay to cope with peak times, or you'll need some local skid buffer.
From a customer point of view. This is on the outskirts of the airport so it's a much longer walk without a covered path (so you'll get wet because at some point it will start raining again in the UK). It's maybe slightly better than long stay, where you do need a bus journey (which tbh isn't that bad). But I'm not sure how much juice is in this application to squeeze.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-4...
Wonder what the actual limit is and what happens when you're above it (and the other max. dimensions)? Couple of EVs out there that are heavier than 2.6 tonnes now. (Volvo EX90, Mercedes EQS, BMW iX, Ioniq 9, Rivians (not yet in the UK), ... and many more right around that weight.)
Is it getting measured in the cabin and declines you?
Possible I guess, but what if you don't have UK plates?
Does the process have a check for forgotten windows?
I'm not even sure if it's possible to even buy a new mass-produced car with no AC anymore in the UK, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter.
It's also not a _normal_ thing to do in the US, though I have heard some people do it in higher-crime cities to avoid the windows being broken.
Sort of feels like those videos you see of high tech warehouses where the human workers really only operate on the outskirts of the building, and everything central is completely automated (picking, sorting, storing, inventory etc)
I miss publications with skilled human editors.
Tom Scott perhaps? Though he will likely get full access to the system.
When they set up the AirTrain, I stopped using the car service. It took longer, but I have always had a soft spot for mass transit, and I kind of got a kick out of boarding a train in Huntington, NY, and leaving the train, in Shinagawa.
https://www.gatwickexpress.com/how-were-performing/train-ser...
Because despite it's shoddy performance, it's very much a train.
Taxis I understand.
There is both a rational environment choice in that, and a nice feeling of being part of a humming crowd
Do you people even ride trains? Are you OK with the 50/50 odds of gettings home on time?
Get there by rideshare in 20 mins, trains on time, 1hr to city, 10 min shuttle to airport. On time every time.
I moved my luggage by hand more WITHIN the airport than getting to the airport.
Would do it again
(The main difference being 3D in Japan and 2D at Gatwick)
Interesting, I wonder if this is just a "Like to be able to see availability and cross-reference data to set individual pricing" or if it's because of a technical limitation, and if so, what could that possibly be?
It's one of the things where I can't see what is there robot's role here.
That's a solved problem, drench the car in copious amounts of water and flush all oxygen with high pressure CO2 tanks.
You're right though, if every car is a BEV of unknown battery health left for a week+ packed bumper to bumper in a baking hot car park in the middle of summer, that would definitely be considerably worse
Indeed, and the usual solution that firefighters choose is to dump copious amounts of water onto the burning vehicle and then drown the carcass into even more water. The biggest issue is that it takes time for the firefighters to arrive - about 10 minutes in Germany by law - and so a fire has quite the time to progress.
For example this one is about a van which got stuck in one for two years: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx207jwknp5o
Or there was one in Sweden which trapped cars for 2 months: https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/fnurret-pa-psnurran--m-vill-se-... (sorry, could only find a swedish source)
It is because these kind of systems are complicated bespoke automation. When it breaks down it costs a fortune to fix it. And what can happen is that different parties (operators vs manufacture vs maintainer) gets into a contract dispute to see who is liable to pay to get it fixed. Which as you can guess can take years to play out. Meanwhile your vehicle is stuck and nobody who could is interested in spending a penny on getting it out.
In contrast to that this project is better in two ways. There are multiple robots. (or at least there really should be) So if one breaks down the other robots can still retrieve cars (albeit of course with reduced throughput). And because the storage is just a flat parking lot if all the robots give up the ghost at the same time humans can drive out the cars from the edges of the storage rows.
Give a buffer that should be feasible.
Just for most people a stolen locked car isn’t really of much uses.
And they say, oh, no, you can come for free if you’re willing to walk 15 minutes to the terminal. No, that’s greed plain and simple.
With that said, at Zürich airport, you do have ~5 minutes before there's a charge which I find reasonable.
How about we fix basic issue as a species first, before going all robots and AI and trips to Mars?
Here cars normally leave by a robot picking it up and depositing the vehicle in a garage. Probably there is a vehicle entrance to the parking area for maintenance, but it would be weird to see a car leave through that. Similarly thiefs could cut a hole in the fence and drive through that but again, visually very distinct from a normal operation. Of course it still doesn't help if the security is in on it, but it would be easier to notice that things are askew for a competent security.
So that leaves us with the thieves somehow confusing the digital systems so it dispenses the car to the thieves. And that very much depends on the security of their digital systems.
Hence why I think it would be hard to secure a normal parking lot even when operated competently. But this has the potential if implemented well, to be much more secure.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE
As always, yes I know this already exists in Japan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQQlREtqAM8
As far as I understand, first one Ocado robot went on fire, it doesn't have a sensor for fire so it kept going. Neither do its neighbours, who pass right by it and catch fire themselves. And so it keeps going until everything is on fire.