Empirical evaluation of an on-street parking pricing scheme in the city center

Abstract

Parking pricing policies can be used as a policy instrument to steer the parking market and reduce the externalities caused by traffic in general and parking in particular. A more efficient management of parking demand can improve the utilization of the limited parking capacity at high-demand areas. Even though parking policies are often a topic of public debate, there is lack of systematic empirical analysis of various parking measures. This paper proposes a methodology to empirically measure and evaluate the impacts of on-street parking policies. The utilization of on-street parking demand is computed based on transaction data from 70 ticket vending machines which is calibrated using floating car films. Measures of parking utilization such as occupancy and its temporal variation, throughput, parking duration and turnover are compared prior and following the introduction of a new parking scheme in the center of Stockholm, Sweden, in September 2013. The results indicate that the policy led to a reduction in parking occupancy although it did not yield the 85% occupancy level objective. Furthermore, the price increase has contradictory effects on throughput and turnover due to the interaction between parking occupancy and duration. The results also question the transferability of price elasticity. It is thus recommended to consider multiple measures of parking utilization when carrying out policy evaluation.