CENG433: Advanced Traffic

Engineering
Chapter 13: Parking Studies
(Traffic Engineering Book by
McShane)
 Importance
• At a residential trip end, private vehicles are accessed in
private driveways, garages, on-street parking spaces, or
nearby off-street lots or garages.
• At the other end of the trip, the location and nature of
parking opportunities depends heavily on the land-use
function and density as well as on a wide variety of public
policy and planning issues.
• Auto-accessibility is dependent upon supply, convenience,
and cost of parking facilities
• Major activity centers, from regional shopping malls to
sports facilities to airports, rely on significant parking
supply
• Parking supply must be balanced with other forms of
access (public transportation), or schemes (such as drive
through) to mitigate negative environmental impacts
 Parking Demand
• The key issue in parking is a determination of how
many spaces are required for a particular development,
and where they should be located.
• Taken from locally based zoning regulations on
minimum numbers of spaces
• The need for parking spaces depends upon many
factors, including:
– The type and size of land use(s) in a development,
– The general density of the development environment and
– The amount and quality of public transportation access
available.
 Parking Generation
• Main Source: ITE Parking Generation Rates
• First edition: 2010
• 5th Edition available (2019) and used
• Parking generation relates the maximum
observed number of occupied parking spaces
to size or activity level of the land use involved
• Rates available for 106 land uses, most
important and accurate ones are provided
here
• 1GFA =
gross floor
area
• 2School
Population
= students
+
employees
+ visitors
• A “quality restaurant” is a
sit-down facility catering to
an adult population, which
usually includes a bar. It can
be a standalone facility or
part of a regional or
national chain.
• “Family restaurant”
connotes a higher turnover
rate, and a facility catering
to families with or without
children, without bar. They
can be stand-alone or part
of a local or regional chain
as well.
• “Fast-food restaurants”
obviously represent very
high turnover rates
 Parking Generation
• These are providing maximum space required
in the peak times
• More detailed rates are available in Parking
generation manual
• Locally available rates should be used
wherever possible
• Users consider the facility to be full at 95%
occupancy hence 5 to 10% allowance should
be made for the peak demand period
 Example
• Consider the case of a general office building,
consisting of 50,000 sq ft of office space. What
is the peak parking load expected to be at this
facility?
 Shared Parking
• A parking facility is used to satisfy the parking demand for
multiple users or destinations
• The shopping center, where several (or many) different
stores and ancillary services (restaurants, banks, etc.) can
share parking.
• This offers obvious efficiencies, as a given space can serve
multiple land uses, as long as the time of need is different.
• An individual living in an apartment house can pay a
monthly fee for a parking space in an adjacent facility.
There are two ways in which that can be accomplished. The
individual can be given exclusive use of a particular
numbered space or the individual can be given use of
shared spaces, with a guarantee that one will always be
available.
Typical Sampling
 Shopping Centres

• Strip: <30,000 ft2, anchored by a small business.

• Neighborhood: 30,000 to 100,000 ft2, anchored by a supermarket and/or
drug store.
• Community: 100,000 to 400,000 ft2, anchored by general merchandise
stores or discount retailer.
• Regional: 400,000 to 800,000 ft2, anchored by a department store.
• Super Regional: > 800,000 ft2, anchored by several department stores.
 Parking Ratios
• If a shopping centre
has less than 20%
occupancy of leasable
area by movie houses,
restaurants, and other
entertainment uses,
then following rates
may be used
• Guidelines are for 20th
peak hour of year
 Example
• Consider the following case: a new regional
shopping center with 1,000,000 sq ft of GLA is
to be built. It is anticipated that about 15% of
the GLA will be occupied by movie theaters,
restaurants, or other entertainment facilities.
How many parking spaces should be
provided?
• Note: Use both tables for shared shopping
centers
 Shared Parking Equation
• P=N×K×R×A×pr/O
• P=parking demand, spaces,
• N=size of activity measured in appropriate units
• K=portion of destinations that occur at any one
time,
• pr=person-destinations per day (or other
timeperiod) per unit of activity,
• A=proportion of people arriving by automobiles
• O = average auto occupancy of travelers to the
shopping center
 Example
• Consider the case of the same 1,000,000 ft2 retail shopping
center in the heart of a Central Business District (CBD). The
following additional information has been collected:
• Approximately 40% of all shoppers are in the CBD for other
reasons (pr=0.40).
• Approximately 70% of shoppers travel to the retail center
by automobile (A=0.70).
• Approximate total activity at the center is estimated to be
45 person-destinations per 1,000 sq ft of gross leasable
area, of which 20% occur during the peak parking
accumulation period (pr=45; K=0.20).
• The average auto occupancy of travelers to the shopping
center is 1.5 persons per car (0=1.5)
• As the unit of size is 1,000 sq ft of gross leasable area,
N=1,000,000/1,000=1,000
 Shared Parking Equation
• More logical and efficient than the tables
• But requires several inputs related to the
facility and travelers
 Zoning Regulations
• Local zoning regulations generally specify the minimum number of
parking spaces that must be provided for developments of specified
type and size.
• Zoning regulations also often specify needs for handicapped parking
and set minimum standards for loading zones.
• Arrangements for Shared Parking:
– Agreements between various sites to share a single (or multiple)
parking facilities within walking distance (to all the sites) can be
encouraged. This works particularly well when the predominant land
uses at the cooperating sites have peak demands at different times.
– Developers can be made to pay fees in lieu of building exclusive
parking spaces for their buildings. These can be pooled to support
construction of public parking lots or garages that serve multiple sites.
Such public sites must be provided and become the responsibility of a
local agency.
– Businesses within a defined area can be placed in a downtown
business improvement district, and taxed to provide funds for public
parking facilities.
Zoning Regulations
• Public parking spaces should be
more encouraged in a dense
urban area
• The recommended zoning
requirements from parking
generation rates would be
significantly lower in urban
areas with good transit access,
captive walk-in patrons (people
working or living in the
immediate vicinity of the
development), or organized
car-pooling programs.
 Handicapped Parking Requirements
As per ITE;
• Office—0.02 spaces per 1,000 sq ft GFA
• Bank—1 to 2 spaces per bank
• Restaurant—0.30 spaces per 1,000 sq ft GFA
• Retail (< 500,000sq ft GFA)—0.075 spaces per
1,000 sq ft GFA
• Retail (≥500,000sq ft GFA)—0.060 spaces per
1,000 sq ft GFA
• In all cases, there is an effective minimum of one
handicapped space.
Parking Studies and Characteristics
• Critical to parking supply needs are:
– Duration,
– Accumulation, and
– Proximity requirements of parkers
– Duration and accumulation are related
• Vehicles parked for longer duration will
consume more space-hours of capacity as
compared to vehicles parked for short
durations
 Proximity: How Far Parkers Will Walk
• Vary with trip purpose and urban area size.
• Longer for work trips
• Longer for off-street parking
• Shorter for short duration of parking and
shopping trips (carrying things)
• 1200 ft is considered as an upper limit
• 75% parkers are within 0.25 miles of destination
• Interview studies should be done to determine
the actual and desired proximity and other
characteristics of parkers
 Parking Inventory
• Inventories include observations of the number
of parking spaces and their location, time
restrictions on use of parking spaces, and the
type of parking facility (e.g., on-street, off-street
lot, and off-street garage).
• Done manually by observers canvassing the
facility on-foot
• ITS technologies can be used
• Parking tags, used for fee assessment can also be
used for data collection
• Precoding must be for the area
 Parking Inventory
• If parking spaces are not marked along the
curb, following equations may be used to
calculated the number of spaces along the
curb length
• Parallel parking: 23 ft/stall
• Angle parking: 12.0 ft/stall
• 90-degree parking: 9.5 ft/stall
• Usually taken for 8-11 hours of the day
 Parking Inventory
• P = Fx∑(NxT)/D
• P=parking supply, vehs,
• N=number of spaces of a given type and time-
restriction,
• T=Duration when parking spaces are available
during the study period, hrs,
• D=average parking duration during the study−
• F = efficiency factor, values range from 0.85 to
0.95 and increase as average duration increases
 Example
• Consider an example in which an 11-hour
study of an area revealed that there were 450
spaces available for the full 12 hours, 280
spaces available for 6 hours, 150 spaces
available for 7 hours, and 100 spaces available
for 5 hours. The average parking duration in
the area was 1.4 hours. An efficiency factor of
0.90 will be used. Parking supply in this study
area is computed as:
 Parking Accumulation
• the total number of vehicles
parked at any given time.
• observed parking accumulations
are constrained by parking
supply; thus, parking demand
that is constrained by lack of
supply must be estimated using
other means
• As the population of an
urbanized area increases,
maximum parking accumulation
also increases—an obvious
expectation.
• Over time, the maximum
observed parking accumulations
are increasing.
 Parking Duration
• Parking duration is the length of time that
individual vehicles remain parked.
• It a distribution of individual values,
• Both the distribution and the average value
are of great interest
 Accumulation and Duration Study
• For collecting local data
• For on-street parking facilities: Recording of
license plate numbers of parked vehicles at
regular intervals (10 to 30 minutes)
• An observer walks a particular route (usually
up one block face and down the opposite
block face)
• One observer can be expected to observe up
to 60 spaces every 15 minutes
• Accumulation totals. Sum of each column
• Duration distribution. By examining each line
of each field sheet, a duration distribution is
created.
• Violations. The number of vehicles illegally
parked, either because they occupy an illegal
space or have exceeded the legal time
restriction of a space, should be noted.
• D = ∑(NX x X x I)/NT
• D=average parking duration,h/veh,
• NX=number of vehicles parked for x intervals,
• X = number of intervals
• I = Duration of interval in hour
• NT = total number of parked vehicles observed
• TR = parking turnover rate, TR. This rate indicates the number of
parkers that, on average, use a parking stall over a period of 1 hour.
• TR = NT/(PS x TS)
• TR=parking turnover rate, veh/stall/h,
• NT=total number of parked vehicles observed
• PS = number of parking stalls
• TS = time of study in hours
Example
Field Survey
for One Block
Last three
numbers are
recorded as
they are
often distinct
for each
vehicle
 Example
• Summarizing
Data of Entire
Area for
Accumulation
 Example

Summarizing Data of Entire Area for Duration

 Example Calculations
• Number of parkers observed = Sum of all
vehicles parked from duration table or from
individual blocks’ field sheet = ?
• D= from duration table = ?
• TR (1500 stalls, time of study = 7hrs (8AM to
3PM)) = ?
• % Maximum accumulation = ?
 Study for Off-Street Facilities
• counts of the number of entering and departing
vehicles recorded by 15-minute intervals.
• Accumulation estimates are based on a starting
count of occupancy in the facility and the
difference between entering and departing
vehicles.
• A duration distribution for off-street facilities can
also be obtained if the license-plate numbers of
entering and departing vehicles are also
recorded.
 Incorporating Deficiencies of Field
Studies
• Field studies cannot reflect repressed demand
due to inadequacies in the parking supply
• Alternative approaches to find out repressed
demand:
– Large numbers of illegally parked vehicles
– Large numbers of vehicles parked unusually long
distances from primary generators
– Maximum accumulations that occur for long
periods of the day and/or where the maximum
accumulation is virtually equal to the number of
spaces legally available
 Other Parking Studies
• Origin studies by taking home addresses for
each vehicle from state department (very
difficult)
• Interview studies to collect:
– Trip purpose,
– Duration,
– Distance walked,
– Attitudinal and background parker characteristic
information