In a few years the streets of Oulu will be less packed with cars, and finding a parking place in the city centre will be a lot easier than it is now. Shoppers will simply drive their car to the edge of the centre and down a ramp, out of sight and into a well-lit parking garage under Kaupppurienkatu. This ‘bedrock parking’, Kallioparkki, is one of the four pillars of the city development plan Mali 2020. The other three pillars in the city development plan are: increasing the size of the pedestrian area around the street Rotuaari, filling up empty spaces within the building blocks and transforming Torikatu into a public transport route, free of private vehicles.

 

City planner Matti Räinä explains more: "Mali 2020 is a project for the future spatial development and traffic structure for Oulu. One aim is to get the parking services to a higher level and reduce the sight of cars,” - in short, the Mali 2020 project aims to improve the public spaces and traffic flow in the centre of Oulu.

The idea behind Kallioparkki is to cope with competition from hypermarkets along the major roads in and out of the city. These huge markets have huge parking lots for the customers, luring shoppers away from the city centre. At the moment there are several parking places scattered throughout the city centre. With the construction of the Kallioparkki some of these will be freed up, and the parking concentrated under Kauppurienkatu. This will make the city of Oulu competitive with the hypermarkets: with plenty or parking, shoppers can easily drive into the city centre. The new car-park is to be the first of its kind in Oulu, although the idea is tried and tested in Helsinki where people have a lot of experience with bedrock parking. In Helsinki the idea has proven to be very stable and relatively cheap.

What does it look like?
When the whole garage is finished there will be entrance ramps in Hallituskatu near the taxi stand, and at Autoranta, the parking place in front of the library. The ramps will curve 30 meters down under Kauppurienkatu, where the parking places are built. It will stretch over a 500-meter distance from Uusikatu to the market square. The tunnel tubes will be about 4 meters high and well lit. This will provide an open and bright atmosphere, in contrast with musty and poorly-illuminated garages in other places. After parking their car people can access street level via one of six elevators. Some of the elevators will go directly up to the street, while others will pop up in buildings. At street level one won't even notice at once that there is huge underground parking below.

The parking won’t only keep passenger cars invisible in the city centre. Heavy delivery lorries will also be hidden underground. Every building block bordering Kauppurienkatu will have a lorry service area where goods can be unloaded to the stores above. The service areas will also be accessible through the parking garage.
 
Two building phases

The situation of Kallioparkki, with the change in design that the smaller part is now oriented parallel to the main tunnel, under Pakkahuoneenkatu (Source: Tekninen Keskus, City of Oulu)

Planning for the bedrock parking started in 2000, and the first cars are expected to enter by 2010. To open parts of the parking to the public before work is finished; the project has been split up in two phases. The first phase of Kallioparkki will cost about 21 million Euro and provide space for up to 700 cars. This will involve two parallel tunnels. One is in two layers directly under Kauppurienkatu, the second is a single layer that lies more or less under Pakkahuoneenkatu. If research shows that demand for parking spaces increases during the construction time a decision for the second part of Kallioparkki will be made. The second phase will add parking for up to more 800 cars, at the cost of an extra 24 million Euro. "But it is not the tax payer who has to take the rap for this", Räinä says. "The bedrock parking will be financed by the owners of the building blocks in the city centre. Parties like companies and real estate owners have great interest in the parking, since it increases the service level for the stores and the investment values for the property owners." The sole role of the City of Oulu is to guide the project, setting up the terms and overseeing the work.

In the meantime the Oulu community can learn more about the project and voice their concerns about parking in the city. The designs for the city centre can be reviewed from January 23rd until February 23rd at Tekninen Keskus in Uusikatu. Räinä expects only a small amount of complaints about the plans: "Summer 2006 the sketches have been reviewed by the community, which resulted in only a couple of negative reviews." It’s hoped that planning for the project will be completed shortly so that construction of the first phase of Kallioparkki can start in early 2008.