to store and retrieve the pallets. Typically, a carrier transports a pallet to the intersection adjacent to the designated storage location, and a mechanism transfers the pallet off of the carrier into the storage position on the transverse track.
The depth of storage of the pallets along the transverse axis is generally limited to the space adjacent to the circulation track, plus one or two additional tandem spaces. The space is limited due to the difficulty of shuffling pallets to positions adjacent to the circulation track which are accessible to the carriers. This system is also disadvantageous, because the entire parking structure must be built and configured to allow the carriers to move thereabout to carry the pallets to and from their storage locations. In addition, since the systemdepends on the carrier(s) to store and retrieve the vehicles, the system may take a substantial amount of time to retrieve or store a vehicle during peak parking/retrieval times.
In other parking systems, such as direct handling systems, the customer drives his or her vehicle onto a cradle that supports the vehicle's tires. A comb-like handling device then lifts the vehicle off the cradle and carries it to its storage location, where the vehicle is placed on another storage cradle. Where direct handing is used in horizontal configurations, the carrier mechanism runs along a longitudinal track and deposits vehicles on cradles positioned adjacent to the track. Several direct-handling systems are known that use an elevator-like mechanism and a turntable to access storage spaces adjacent to an elevator shaft. In