A New Paradigm of Parking Management

Cruising for parking represents a loss of efficiency to the private car. It generates a waste of time and fuel, worsens congestion and increases pollutant emissions. In this book, we propose a system of in-advance paid online curb parking space reservations to reduce cruising. The main objective is to improve urban mobility within the new paradigm of parking planning and management. This system was designed with policy concerns of equity, sustainability and public acceptability. User response to the possibility of reserving spaces was assessed and was considered positive. Cruising for parking relevance was assessed in two case-studies in Lisbon. A model was built with the data collected and a stochastic queuing discrete-event microsimulator was developed and validated to compare scenarios of no reservations versus variable allocation of spaces for reservations. Simulation results illustrate a statistically significant reduction of total travel time, up to 3%, with the existence of reservations. This work includes the Java source code for the simulation and detailed cruising measurement results.