DTWflyer

griffy208

Valet Connections is another great service for offsite parking!

ethernal

A good heads up. It's somewhat surprising (unless it used to be full all of the time in the past). Most airport garages are becoming increasingly deserted as a result of Uber/Lyft and similar services. Atlanta has even significantly pared down its plans for parking garage replacement due to it.

HDQDD

Parking deck also full at RDU today. Welcome to summer.

strickerj

zitsky

What about the Economy lots? Were those full too? Do you know?

DTWflyer

I'd venture to guess that a combination of the geographic vastness of SE Michigan, the influence of the auto industry and attachment to personally-owned automobiles, and demographics of travelers flying out of DTW we are far more likely to drive to the airport than many other places.

It used to periodically fill-up midweek about 15 years ago in like 2004/2005 when the rates where like $12/day and a negligible difference in price versus the offsite parking lots.
In the past 10+ years I haven't seen the garage ever fill-up due in part to the economic downturn initially, but also since the rates are now up to $26/day which off-site can be significantly less.

That said, I wouldn't bother to park at the Big Blue/North if flying out of the McNamera, its easier to use one of the off-site lots off Merriman. The frequency and spacing of the shuttles between terminals, especially at off-peak hours, is pretty poor in comparison to the frequency of shuttles to the privately owned offsite lots. Plus you effectively have to navigate two ground transportation centers/parking facilities versus just being dropped to/from your car in the offsite lot.

indufan

Certainly not true in IND and CVG.

gooselee

I wish some valet service would come back to ATL...

Not rare to find the daily garages packed full by 8am on Mondays.

timfountain

Hah, you should try Portland, PDX close-in long term parking garage. It's often full by Monday afternoon and empties out by Friday midday. It is very common to see the full signs. Port of Portlands' response to a continually under sized long term parking facility? Build more parking? Nope. Raise the rates by an egregious amount and state that their intention is "To encourage the use of public transportation". Yes, that works for those of us who have NO public transportation options even vaguely close to where they live....

OHDL1

Same in CVG....overflow lot being used more and more.

HDQDD

Not as of yesterday. This time of year it's not unusual for the main decks to be full mid week. I follow @RDUAirport on twitter. Sometimes they give good heads up on parking areas being full. Instead of wasting a bunch of money on this dumb parking reservation system and renaming stuff Economy/Central/Express/Premier (which make no sense), they should have added parking. If memory serves, they haven't added any significant parking increases in well over a decade despite years of 10+% growth.

Edit: Just found this link which has a real time estimation of parking loads: https://www.rdu.com/parking/

cardsqc

I'd tend to agree with this. I'm not actually sure how well uber and lyft have really embedded themselves around here (I see people using them, but it's not exactly what I'd call common, even in a college town where I'd expect to see it more). I know the few people that I've known that have tried driving for one of those services gave up because it wasn't worth their effort. Uber estimates that it's be at least $114 for me to take it to the airport, so I'd be looking at a trip where it would have to cost me less than around $250 to drive and park to make it worth it. The off-site lots I can park for $8/day, so the reality is I don't do too many trips that would make it worth it. Heck, I'd sooner rent a one-way car and do that than use uber to make the trip.

I could theoretically take the local airport (LAN), but it's typically way too expensive and way too inconvenient with schedules to make it worth not driving to detroit to catch a flight. There's bus service, but as soon as I hit about 2 people in the trip, it's cheaper to drive or rent a car. And this is Michigan, we don't really believe in public transportation.

All that said though, I'd be hard pressed to park in the main parking lot anyways, so it's still surprising it fills up. It's just too expensive to deal with it, and the off-site places are efficient enough that they make it easy to choose to go with one of them.

bmw745ion19s

That is a bi-product of the elected government and the idiots that vote that way. One of the reasons I visit California often but don't think I will own a place there anytime soon. What a shame!

apodo77