Evaluating the Impacts of Parking App Services on Travellers' Choice Behaviour and Traffic Dynamics

Abstract

As the products of intelligent transportation systems, parking apps have become convenient platforms for implementing parking policies, which can be provided as parking app services. This paper proposes a traffic simulation model for evaluating the impacts of parking app services on the travellers’ choice behaviour and traffic dynamics. Travellers are assumed to use three types of parking app services: the provision of information on real-time parking lot occupancies, parking reservation, and the display of dynamic parking fees. The behaviour of travellers, such as travellers’ mode choices, departure time choices, and learning behaviour, are considered in this model. Numerical experiments show that providing information on real-time parking lot occupancies can be helpful in reducing the use ratio of commercial parking lots, but the effect will ultimately be smoothed during the evolution of traffic dynamics. Moreover, parking reservation is an effective way to reduce travel costs and encourage travellers to choose park-and-ride. Furthermore, dynamic parking fees usually lead to the oscillation of traffic dynamics and travellers’ choices, in addition to an increase in travel costs. This model is a useful tool for analysing the impacts of other parking management policies that can be implemented as parking app services and can be a reference for evaluating the impacts of other parking polices.