Parking Surveys & Studies
Parking Surveys can entail a variety of technique and application.
Parking Accumulation Surveys count of the number of vehicles parked within a defined zone at regular, predetermined time intervals. Typically a field observer walks a circuit through the car park counting and recording the number of cars present per zone on each interval.
Electronic data loggers can also be utilised for closed networks, where the volume of all vehicles entering and leaving the network cordon are recorded and the variation of In and Out movements are used to calculate a moving accumulation estimate.
Site visitation cycle times in each case is usually set to the signed parking time limit or a subset, eg a 1 Hour restriction may have a 1 hour cycle or 30 or 15 minute cycles.
Parking zones are usually defining a specific parking condition or restricted limit, eg Disabled Parking, Loading Zone, 2P, Taxis Only, specific kerb space. An extreme application of this survey, would be to have every parking space with it's own unqiue identifying number or space code
Survey costs are proportional to the frequency of visitation and recording, so there is a matching of minimum data need versus budget availability to optimise a survey plan.
Parking Stations can be more economically surveyed by coverage of entrance and exits only, where discrete floor utilisation is not required, else a floor walk coverage is required.
Parking Duration, is undertaken when you need to know how long has a vehicle parked.
This survey typically works to cycle times of an observation and recording of a part of the vehicle registration number plate and noting by an allocated zone identifier. A zone identifier again identifying a unique special parking condition or locale of parking.
The degree of sensitivity of interpretation is limited to the design cycle time, eg 5, 15, 30 minute or 1/ 2/3 or 4 hour. The goals of the survey need to be clearly defined prior to survey design with and understanding of the underlying issues. A long term cycle time of say hourly will not assist with managing a short term demand adjacent to a shop that serves a role as a news paper seller or milk bar.
The conventional output of such a survey is to depict, subject to cycle frequency sensitivity the demand of duration of stay of vehicles. This may assist in determine a demand for say a long term car park or misuse of a short stay park station by all day public transport commuters. Or you may reassign a part of a one hour restricted zone to say 5 minute parking to allow and free up an area out the front a news paper seller to have a shorter but higher turnover.
ATS has developed some very useful data outputs that maximise the intelligence of the third dimension to this data set, where we have Parking Accumulation by Duration of stay analysis and for example Depicting:
- Profile with an accumulation of each duration interval.
- Profile of Duration demand by time of arrival
- Profile of Duration demand by time of departure
By zone capacity and percentage occupancy with accumulation per cycle time.
ATS can also assist with a combined OD and parking survey, whereby you have the convention OD cordon and may include parking stations within the cordon and identify travel patterns to and from the parking station while also obtaining parking accumulation and duration of stay information.
