Overview
The national and international evidence base for parking policy is surprisingly thin in spite of the intensity of its discussion in transport and landuse planning (For the best summary see Shoup, 2005). To close this gap the project pursues two approaches: a set of stated preference (SP) surveys to address the short- and longer term choices (parking type, search strategy, parking location, duration of stay) in conjunction with the choice of mode, destination, frequency of visit and car ownership; second a detailed analysis of an existing GPS data set to derive parking search times as a function of the degree of saturation of the supply.
The SP experiments are based on the on-going KEP survey of the Swiss Federal Railroads. The estimated choice modells is applied in a set of scenarios to assess the impact of parking policy on CO2 emissions. The scenarios were implemented both in aggregate models, as well in the agent-based micro-simulation framework MATSIM. Both types of models benefit from the various models estimated, especially the parking search time model, as well as the parking choice models.
The project aims to capture the short and long run impact of parking supply on travel behaviour and mobility tool ownership, especially:
- What search strategies are used and why?
- What impacts have the search strategy, type of parking and parking demand on parking search times?
- What impacts has parking supply on demand and parking duration (time limits, price regime, search time, walk access)?
- What impacts have parking supply at origin and destination, service quality and quality of activtities on the choice of mode, destination, departure time and frequency of trips?
- What impact has parking policy on CO2 emissions?
The results should allow evidence-based policy discussion of parking.
The following activities will take place:
Study of literature, RP and SP surveys, modeling approach to parking with GPS data and microsimulation, estimation of behavioral models with discrete choice approach, calculation of energy consumption and CO2 emissions based on "Handbook Emission Factors".
Funding
Results
The research analysis effects of the legal framework (the requirement of quantitative restrictions of motor vehicles fleet) and parking management tools (number of parking spaces, parking time restrictions, fees, etc.) on traffic behavior (eg destinations, modal choice, route frequencies, etc.). These results allow the reliable quantification of the impacts of these measures on energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
A partial result was development of the first model of a Park site operation, which was developed by an innovative approach based on extensive GPS data.
The research also provides qualitative information about long-term effects of the laws and traffic regulations for parking policy.
Innovation aspects
The research results allow for the first time to quantify the effects of parking management measures on traffic behavior in different spatial and material contexts objectively. It thus contributes to a more ambitious transport policy debate on the impacts of these measures.
Parking search traffic in cities is particularly important because of energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The newly developed model "Park Web traffic" allows to quantify these effects.