Impact of parking types & time restrictions on urban parking choice behaviour

Abstract

Urban parking policy formation comprises community consultation, business interest, political interest and traffic safety aspects. Local governments in Sydney have parking policies which are generally evaluated qualitatively. This thesis studies the parking choice of individuals in Burwood urban centre which is located in the inner-west of Sydney, Australia. It explores the Burwood town centre s existing parking policy quantitatively using econometric models. Past and recent parking literature have labelled experiments comparing specific parking locations and parking types. This research advances the parking literature by deriving the attributes weight such as parking search time, walk time among the short-term and all-day parking by conducting an unlabeled stated choice experiment. Based on the revealed preference survey conducted in 2011, an econometric parking choice model is developed that includes various factors which influence car driver s selection of different parking types at Burwood town centre. The results show that influence of parking price is found to be consistently significant in all parking types. Individuals are willing to pay more for on-street parking, especially which are located near restaurants, school zones, shops and services. The second study, which was conducted in June 2015, comprised stated preference survey with socio-demographic attributes. Though pricing is known to impact parking choice, there is limited understanding of the impact of parking time restriction on parking choice. This survey evaluates the difference between the willingness to pay for short-term parking and all-day parking. A mixed logit model was developed to account for the preference heterogeneity among the users. The proposed model also accounts for walking time to destination and parking search time. The findings reveal that individuals have higher Willingness to Pay to reduce their search time for short-term parking as compared to all-day parking. Furthermore, for both parking restrictions type, parkers are willing to pay more to reduce the parking search time compared to walk time. The research outcomes of this thesis would help policy makers to evaluate the existing parking restriction s location, pricing and future carpark development locations. These would not only help in easing urban traffic congestion on roads, by significantly reducing drivers cruising for parking space, but also help local governments raise additional funds which can be used in the maintenance and development of carparks.