One thing that’s a bit inconvenient for me from time to time is some parking garages not allowing cars to enter for part of the night - one example being a parking garage in my state capital that’s convenient for the main railway station but that does not allow car ingress betwee 02:00 and 06:00.
To illustrate: using these facilities involves the following steps:
Step 1: drive to automatic barrier, press button, collect coded card or plastic chip with RF chip. Boom is raised.
Step 2: Drive in, find space, park car.
Step 3: Leave parking garage on foot.
…
Step 4: Enter parking garage on foot.
Step 5: Insert coded card or plastic chip into payment machine; pay parking fee according to time elapsed since Step 1; retrieve coded card or plastic chip.
Step 6: Enter car; drive to automatic barrier.
Step 7: Insert coded card/plastic chip. Boom is raised. Drive out.
(Note: none of the steps above requires any action by a human employee. Any associated employees usually sit in a remote control center to monitor security screens and answer emergency calls.).
Now I can understand parking garages closing totally (for ingress and egress) for part of the night, as some other parking garages do - if you make sure that nobody is in, then lock up, you can shut down lighting, ventilation, etc., and also economize on monitoring/security etc.
But what use (to the operator of a parking garage) is shutting down ingress (step 1 in the above list) for some period of the night, but still allowing egress (steps 4 to 7)? That way they still have to deal with all the safety/security/ventilation/lighting etc. corollaries of having people and moving vehicles inside of the parking garage, but miss out on revenue from people who would like to drive in within the time period in question.
Anyone here knowledgeable about this kind of operation?