From modeling parking search to establishing urban parking policy

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2012

Parking choice is an essential part of individual transportation; however, many travel demand and traffic simulations do not include parking. This paper reports on a proposal for a simple parking model and describes how this model was implemented into an existing, agent-based traffic simulation. The parking model provides feedback to the traffic simulation so that the overall simulation can react to spatial differences in parking demand and supply. Simulation results of a scenario in the city of Zürich, Switzerland, demonstrated that the model could capture key elements of parking, including capacity and pricing, and could assist with designing parking-focused transport policies. The paper also discusses possible work, such as microsimulation of the search for large-scale parking.

Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, 2012

In the context of road urban trafic management, the problem of parking spots search is a major issue because of its serious economic and ecological fallout. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent system that aims to decrease, for private vehicles drivers, the parking spots search time. In the system that we propose, a drivers community shares information about spots availability. The decrease in search time is obtained thanks to agents communication and cooperation. The communication between agents takes place via an inter-vehicular network, not imposing any costly infrastructure. The cooperation model necessitates no prior information and ensures the scalability of the proposed system. Implemented with the Madkit platform, our solution has been tested following different configurations. The first results show a decrease in parking spots search time.

Transport Policy, 2015

The engineering view of a measurable, supply-independent, demand for parking that can be expressed by "minimum parking codes" has been generally rejected during the last two decades and is gradually being replaced by "maximum provision" codes, limited parking development, and demand pricing. To assess new planning practices one has to estimate the drivers' reaction to proposed spatial-temporal parking limitations. The paper applies a high-resolution spatially explicit agent-based model termed "PARKAGENT" as a tool for this assessment. The model is used for evaluation of parking demand in the Diamond Exchange area in Ramat Gan, a city in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, for estimating the effectiveness of planned parking facilities for different development scenarios in the area and assessing electronic signage system that directs drivers to vacant parking lots. The results strongly indicate the advantages of agent-based modeling over the current dominant engineering approach and show the potential benefits of using an intelligent parking guidance system.

ki.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de

2012

In the recent years several agent-based parking models have emerged, which provide policy makers with temporally and spatially rich data, what would be impossible to acquire using aggregated models. As we found out, all recent agent-based parking search models, lack the ability to account for the influence of parking shortages on mode or location choice. We close this modelling gap by proposing a new parking search model, which should be built on top of an existing agent-based traffic simulation called MATSim. We point out, that the parking strategy evaluation procedure of the previous parking search models delivers systematically too high search times which can be avoided using the proposed approach. Furthermore we also describe how individual valuation of parking search components (e.g. search time, cost and walk time) could be incorporated in the model. Currently an implementation of the proposed parking search model and an application for the city of Zurich is in progress.

Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 2017

The aim of this paper is to study the impacts of a reservation system for on-street parking. Such a system provides drivers looking for on-street parking with information on available parking spaces, thereby possibly reducing the need to cruise for parking and the accompanying negative externalities. The performance of the proposed system is studied using a highly detailed spatial agent-based simulation. The results of the simulations show that users of a reservation system benefit in terms of reduced search time and reduced walking distance under virtually all simulated circumstances. However, societal benefits are not as clear-cut. The benefit in search time for the users of the system comes at a cost to the regular drivers, which see a nearly identical increase in search time. In contrast, the positive impact on walking distance hardly influences walking distance for regular drivers. Hence, we conclude that the introduction of a reservation system for on-street parking results in a more efficient distribution of available parking spaces among drivers searching for parking.

2018

We estimate parking cruising time curves - the probability Pi({\tau}) of longer than {\tau} parking search for destination Ni located within an area with heterogeneous demand and supply. To do that, we estimate cruising time curves for an area of homogeneous demand and supply and then average these curves based on (1) a model of parking search behavior established in a serious parking game; and (2) a "Maximally Dense" parking pattern obtained for the case where drivers possess full knowledge of the available parking spots and are able to park at the spot closest to their destination that is vacant at the moment they start searching for parking. We verify the proposed methods by comparing their outcomes to the cruising time curves obtained in an agent-based model of parking search in a city. As a practical example, we construct a map of cruising time for the Israeli city of Bat Yam. We demonstrate that despite low (0.65) overall demand-to-supply ratio in Bat Yam, high deman...

Parking in large urban areas is becoming an issue of great concern with many implications (environmental, financial, societal, etc.). In our research we investigate automated dynamic pricing (ADP) as a mechanism for regulating parking place allocation. ADP means that the price for staying in a parking facility for a certain amount of time will fluctuate depending on the day and time of the week. In this paper, such a scenario is explored using multi-agent based simulation. Two kinds of agents are considered: drivers and parking facilities. Experiments are conducted in a real city environment in order to observe the impact of dynamic pricing, competition and demand increase. Results show that dynamic pricing application leads to better results (in terms of profit margin) for the parking facilities while it decreases drivers' utility.

International Series in Intelligent Technologies, 2005

2011

South African Journal of Industrial Engineering

Trying to find a parking space in a parking lot is a routine activity for most people in our society. However, in managing the sustained growth rate in the number of vehicle users, the demand on such parking facilities is likely to remain under constant pressure. Both the users and the management of parking lots use various strategies in dealing with the requirement for suitable parking facilities. This paper presents a computational model using an agent-based modelling technique to simulate two commonly used strategies applied to choosing a parking spot under various demand and supply conditions. The model is unique in the current literature, as it is specifically designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies. The analysis of the experimental results shows that, in most conditions, accepting the first available parking spot and then walking to the destination performed better than driving as close as possible to the destination and then searching for an available parking spot.

2010

Virtually all major cities around the world face severe parking problems in their centers. While existing models of parking search and choice behavior do provide insight into the basic dynamics of parking in cities, as well as into the phenomenon of drivers cruising for on-street parking, virtually all models discussed in the literature ignore a number of key factors that influence parking behavior and parking dynamics.

Civil Engineering Journal

Makassar, an Indonesian city, is situated on the south-western coast of Sulawesi Island. It is the largest commercial centre in eastern Indonesia, and traffic congestion is a problem there. Movement management must establish sufficient and well-organized parking areas, as well as a good and transparent system to eliminate unmonitored restitution funds, in order to address these issues. To address parking issues in Makassar, a legal and technical strategy is developed, with an emphasis on inclusiveness and including both legal and illegal parking spaces. The integrated parking concept is comprised of a mobile, everywhere-accessible parking area reservation system, a vehicle registration system based on licence plate numbers, and an effective data management system. 180 million Indonesian Rupiah are spent on all equipment and activity installations (IDR). At least 50 locations utilising this system will be required for a minimum vehicle range of 250,000 units, resulting in an approxim...

Sensors, 2016

In this article we describe a low-cost, minimally-intrusive system for the efficient management of parking spaces on both public roads and controlled zones. This system is based on wireless networks of photoelectric sensors that are deployed on the access roads into and out of these areas. The sensors detect the passage of vehicles on these roads and communicate this information to a data centre, thus making it possible to know the number of vehicles in the controlled zone and the occupancy levels in real-time. This information may be communicated to drivers to facilitate their search for a parking space and to authorities so that they may take steps to control traffic when congestion is detected.