ParkPGH is a novel parking application that provides real-time and predictive information on the availability of garage parking spaces within Pittsburgh’s Cultural District. The core of the application is a module that collects real-time parking information from the garages by tapping into their gate counts. The real-time component is complemented by a module that uses historical data and an events calendar to predict parking availability. In 2011, visitors to downtown Pittsburgh used ParkPGH more than 300,000 times to determine when and where to park. The application has also been beneficial to garage operators because the information it provides on parking demand affords them greater flexibility in addressing contingencies and managing lease holders. The deployment of ParkPGH, which includes a robust evaluation component, is one piece of a broader transportation ecosystem within the Greater Pittsburgh region. The lessons we learned from the initiative, the application’s relatively low cost, its ease of retrofitting, and its open-source platform can enable other cities to lower the costs of implementing and managing similar smart-parking solutions and significantly shorten their learning curves.

This paper documents the methodological approach and findings of an evaluation process for a smart parking application that provides realtime information on parking availability. The initiative is in response to the increased demand for parking spaces in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Cultural District and the desire to improve patrons’ parking experiences. Primary data, obtained through semistructured interviews and in-person and online surveys of patrons, were utilized for the stakeholder analysis, baseline data, process evaluation, and outcome evaluation phases. Secondary data that utilized count data obtained from website usage logs were employed for the output evaluation phase. The contributions of the evaluation framework are the insights it provides on how the key challenges created by the unique environment within which the system was deployed were addressed. The framework could also be employed to tackle response-shift bias through a binary system approach that uniquely identifies distinct cohorts of respondents. The report is especially timely given the prohibitive cost of employing a supply-side approach to address parking problems in cities, the ease of replicating the evaluation framework and the product design, and the wealth of information the study provides to the body of knowledge about the evaluation of technological products.

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