Cruising for parking creates a moving queue of cars that are waiting for vacated parking spaces, but no one can see how many cruisers are in the queue because they are mixed in with normal cars that are actually going somewhere. In order to mitigate the influence of cruising for parking on the normal cars, the park-and-visit cruising tests with GPS and cameras was applied to collect the behavior of the cruisers, and the videotapes of traffic flows were used to measure the volume of cruising cars and the traffic status of normal cars, simultaneously. On this basis, a parking time model based on proportional hazard-based duration model was proposed, and the factors affecting cruise for parking were analyzed, including the volume, search time, speed, acceleration, lane-change frequency, and distracted time of the cruising car. The multiple linear regression model was also established to compare with proportional hazard-based duration model results. The results indicated that between 9 and 56 percent of the traffic was cruising for parking, and the average search time was about 6.03 min. The low-speed, volume, high acceleration frequency, and lane-change times of cruising cars have a negative effect on shortening travel time of the normal traffic flow. Conversely, high-speed of cruising cars has a positive effect on shortening travel time of traffic flow. Moreover, travel time changes in varying degrees due to various factors. Under postulated conditions, the model can be used to estimate the travel time. It is hoped that this study will contribute to improve the planning and management of cruising for parking.

The rapid development of cities has brought new challenges and opportunities to traditional traffic management. The usage of smart cards promotes the upgrading of intelligent transportation systems, and also produces considerable big data. As an important part of the urban comprehensive transportation system, Nanjing metro has more than 1 million inbound and outbound records of traffic smart cards used by residents every day. How to process these traffic data and present them visually is an urgent problem in modern traffic management. In this study, five working days with normal weather conditions in Nanjing were selected, and the swiping records of the smart cards were extracted, and the space–time characteristics were analyzed. In terms of time analysis, this research analyzed the 24-h fluctuation of daily average passenger flow, peak hour coefficient of passenger flow, 24-h fluctuation of passenger flow on different metro lines, passenger flow intensity on different metro lines and passenger flow comparison at different stations. In spatial analysis, this study uses thermodynamic charts to represent the inflow and outflow of passengers at different stations during early and evening peak periods. The analysis results and visualized images directly reflect the area where Nanjing metro congestion is located, and also shows the commuting characteristics of residents. It can solve the problem of urban congestion, carry out the rational layout of urban functional areas, and promote the sustainable development of people and cities.

No abstract

No abstract

Reliable short-term prediction of available parking space (APS) is the basic theory of parking guidance information system (PGIS). Based on the Intelligent parking system at the Eastern New Town, Yinzhou District, Ningbo, China, this study collected the data of parking availability in the on-street parking areas. The variation characteristics of APS were investigated and analyzed at different spatialtemporal levels. Then the APS prediction models based on Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT) and Wavelet Neural Network (WNN) were proposed. Furthermore, an improved WNN algorithm with (WA) decomposition and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) were presented. The original time series was decomposed and reconstructed by wavelet analysis, and the WNN algorithm found the optimal threshold of initial weight through PSO. The result of GBDT (weekday: MSE=27.37, S MSE =0, TIME=35min, weekend: MSE=9.9, S MSE =0,TIME=35min) and WA-PSO-WNN (weekday: MSE=14.93,S MSE =1.88, TIME=160.32s, weekend: MSE=12.33, S MSE =10.23, TIME=160.95s) approximated the true value. But the prediction time of GBDT was too long to be applicable to the short-term prediction of APS in this paper. Compared with the methods of GBDT, WNN, and PSO-WNN, the WA-PSO-WNN algorithm performs much better. The average differences in MSE between WA-PSO-WNN and GBDT for weekday and weekend data are 45.45% and 58.76%, respectively, indicating that WA-PSO-WNN can increase the prediction accuracy of weekday and weekend data by an average of 45.45% and 58.76% compared with the GBDT model. Finally, the application prospects of short-term APS forecasting were also discussed in reducing cruising parking behavior, reducing illegal parking behavior and adjusting dynamic parking rates to verify the importance of APS short-term forecasting.