An Integrated Model of Downtown Parking and Traffic Congestion

Abstract

This paper presents a downtown parking model that integrates traffic congestion and saturated onstreet parking. We assume that the stock of cars cruising for parking adds to traffic congestion. Two major results come out from the model, one of which is robust. The robust one is that, whether or not the amount of on-street parking is optimal, it is efficient to raise the on-street parking fee to the point where cruising for parking is eliminated without parking becoming unsaturated. The other is that, if the parking fee is fixed at a sub-optimal level, it is second-best optimal to increase the amount of curbside allocated to parking until cruising for parking is eliminated without parking becoming unsaturated.

Investment in EV Charging Spots for Parking

“…As is standard in parking models we model the congestion as a function of the proportion of occupied spots [10]. This reflects that with higher occupancy each driver has to spend more time on average to find a vacant spot.…”

“…We assume firms cluster spots of the same type together (i.e., those with charging and those without) and so consumers at each firm's parking location suffer congestion due to drivers of the same class but not due to other class of drivers, nor with any at the other firm. In general we want a congestion function for each marginal consumer that is increasing in the quantity of consumers already parked, decreasing in the number of spots, and convex in the volume-capacity ratio [10]. For simplicity we will use a linear congestion function, which will be the same for both classes of consumers, i.e.,…”

“…A key feature of parking is that it is a congestible resource, i.e., the more users that park in a given location, the less desirable it is (on average) for the next user who parks there. Commonly this effect is modeled with a congestion cost term that is increasing in the number of users parking in a given location [10]. We follow this approach here and adopt a model similar to those used in the literature on competition with congestible resources, e.g.…”

“…There is a rich literature on examining the effect of prices and competition on parking decisions by consumers and the resulting welfare effects [10], [21]- [28]. The interaction of parking and road usage congestion is examined in [21], which shows a road-usage fee in addition to a parking fee is needed to maximize welfare.…”

A network traffic assignment model for autonomous vehicles with parking choices

“…For example, given a non-AV environment, travelers may have to drive their cars to search for a vacant parking space, which can be very costly to travelers. To mitigate these issues, academic studies related to parking have been experiencing a surge in popularity, particularly with the focuses on cruising for parking (Arnott & Inci, 2006;Inci & Lindsey, 2015;Liu & Geroliminis, 2016;Shoup, 2006), parking reservation or permit schemes (Chen, Spana, Yin, & Du, 2019;Liu, Yang, & Yin, 2014;Shao, Yang, Zhang, & Ke, 2016;Yang, Liu, Wang, & Zhang, 2013), and parking pricing (Arnott et al, 1991;Nourinejad & Roorda, 2017;Qian & Rajagopal, 2014;Zheng & Geroliminis, 2016). However, all of these parking-related studies propose approaches for non-AV transportation systems.…”