Parking Management

 

Parking management and how it can contribute to mobility management

 

The term ‘parking management’ refers to the process of controlling the amount of and/or access to parking on a site. This can be done either by allocating spaces on anything other than a first-come, first served basis (e.g. by using a permit scheme) or else by some form of charging.

 

The prospect of raising or saving money by selling off parking, or more frequently building new buildings on land formerly used for parking, will often act as a catalyst for an organisation to introduce parking management. Parking management can be an extremely effective mobility management tool: a seminal work on site-based mobility management in the UK (DfT, 2002, p 27), noted that parking management is "the hallmark of high-achieving travel plans [site based mobility management]".

 

Examples of parking management include the following. Many of these are only suited to workplaces and to other organisations where travellers are regular and whose identity is known to management:

 

  • You need to buy a permit or daily ticket and display it in your car to park.
  • Access to and egress from the car park is controlled by barriers which operate with identity cards, permits and/or paid tickets.
  • Car parks are divided into certain types of space. The most common example is where some spaces for staff and spaces for visitors, where staff spaces operate on a first-come-first-served basis, but visitor spaces are booked, to ensure that they get a space. Other car parks may reserve or guarantee spaces for car-poolers, for staff who travel by car on business a great deal, or use their car to travel between sites, or simply on the basis of seniority. Others may have one area where spaces are guaranteed, and another where there is a first-come-first-served operation, and charges for permits are much greater for a guaranteed space.
  • Permits to park are rationed and then apportioned on some basis of ‘user need’ e.g. how easy it is for a site user to travel to work by public transport, whether the site user has childcare responsibilities and so on – or similar according to when an employee started working for an organisation.
  • Finally, it may also be possible for organisations to offer cash incentives to staff to stop driving into work. This approach is known as ‘parking cash out’ and has been used in a few cases in the UK and elsewhere. There are, however sometimes issues related to personal taxation that may need to be addressed. For further information, see Enoch (2002).

 

Some form of enforcement is a pre-requisite for any of the above to work properly. If there is no enforcement, they will fall into disrepute.
The legal ability to enforce regulations on private land varies from country to country and so you should check this carefully for your particular situation before developing your plans for parking management. It is also worth noting that if your main concern is to reduce parking demand to a manageable level then it is fairer and more effective to charge on a daily basis, as this will then influence people’s travel choices every day – when it is important for them to drive to the site they will do so and pay to park, and when it is less important, they will use another mode of transport. With a fixed-cost monthly or annual permit the incentive is obviously to use the permit as much as possible (the more days a permit is used, the lower the average daily rate).

 

Click here, to read more about enforcement in the Netherlands and the UK.

 

OPTIMUM² sites that have implemented various kinds of parking management include the following:

 

Lancashire Hospitals

Royal Devon and Exeter Hospitals

Gelre Hospital

Goudse Poort Business Area

Ede Business Area

 

 

When should you consider parking management?

Parking management could suit your site if:


 

  • You have a parking (or parking security) problem, or complaints from neighbours about overspill parking on local streets.
  • Providing existing parking or new parking is costing (or is going to cost) too much.
  • You need to raise money to pay for other mobility management measures (although this should not be the only reason to introduce parking management – if it is, it is unlikely to be acceptable).
  • Conditions imposed as part of planning permission mean that you are not permitted to build as much parking as would be needed to meet unconstrained demand.

 

 

What can parking management achieve?
 

Parking management only works if there is nowhere else to park nearby (within a 15-20 minute walk for a workplace, but less for shops or entertainment). Assuming that this is the case, then parking management can:

 

  • Reduce car use to your site. Even relatively small charges of around €1-€2 per day can reduce demand by 20%, when introduced in tandem with other alternative forms of transport.
  • Solve parking problems. A reduction in demand will obviously reduce pressure on existing parking supply and give "breathing space" to change the way in which existing parking is allocated.
  • Raise money to spend on other mobility management measures. A workplace of 500 employees charging €1 per day to park and with 60% of staff driving to work will raise around €90,000 per year in revenues.
  • Annoy people a lot less than you might expect. Whilst parking charges are never popular before they are introduced, afterwards most people accept them, especially where the benefits of charges are obvious (e.g. it becomes easier to find a parking space as a result of charging, or because car parks are more secure because the revenue is spent on improving security).

 

 

How do I implement parking management and what will it cost me?

 

Implementing parking management is not easy, nor popular, but nor is it impossible: many organisations have done so. Rye and Ison (2005) carried out research on organisations where parking management has been introduced – a link to their paper is provided here – but their conclusions were that the following conditions should as much as possible be satisfied in order to maximise the chances of implementation:  

 

  • Good communication of changes and reasons for them.
  • Site users know and understand the parking management measures.
  • Site users perceive a benefit
  • Parking charges and other regulations are related to the scale of the problem.
  • Alternative transport modes are available, to a good standard.
  • Revenue is used fairly and transparently.
  • Parking regulations are enforced consistently and fairly.
  • Enforcement is not excessive and related to seriousness of the offence.

 

The cost of parking management is influenced by the scale of your operation, and the level of technology that you wish to use. A single card-operated barrier costs in the region of €6,000, for example.

For more information, these links are provided to parking equipment suppliers, without any particular recommendation of any of them. 

 

 

 References

 

Enoch M P (2002) UK parking cash out experience, and lessons from California, Traffic Engineering and Control, 43(5), May, 184-187.

Rye T and Ison S G (2005) Overcoming barriers to the implementation of car parking charges, Transport Policy, 12(1), 57–64.