The Choice of Parking Type: Evidence from Stated Preference Experiments in the United Kingdom and Germany

Abstract

Over recent years parking policy has become a key element of transport policy in many countries. Parking policy measures can affect many different dimensions of travel behaviour but are likely to be most significant in terms of travellers choice of parking type and location. This dimension of travel choice has, to date, received comparatively little attention, yet is of vital importance if we are to properly understand and predict the effects of parking policies measures. This paper presents two studies addressing this issue carried out in the United Kingdom and Germany. Both studies used a stated preference approach in order to collect disaggregate data on travellers responses to changes in parking attributes and used these data to build simple logit models of parking type choice. The studies were designed in order to allow comparable choice models to be estimated from the two datasets. The results obtained strongly indicate the need to separately identify the costs associated with different components of the parking activity (e.g., general in-vehicle time, parking search time, egress time) and also point to the existence of significant differences in the relative valuation of these components across different journey purposes. Where possible, the results of the choice modelling exercises are also compared with existing revealed and stated preference results and are found to be generally in line with prior expectations. The methodology adopted in the two studies also allowed an informal comparison to be made between conventional and computer-based methods of administering stated preference exercises. Although only indicative, the results here suggest that the extra customisation of the stated preference exercise made possible by the use of computer- based methods does deliver worthwhile benefits in terms of improved quality of models.