Optimizing public parking supply and pricing strategies in a competitive market with shared private parking services

Abstract

Shared private parking spots (SPPSs) are believed to play a crucial role in balancing the surging parking demand and further alleviating the parking pressure of public carparks. Previous relevant studies mainly focused on public parking spot management without consideration of SPPSs. Additionally, limited attention has been paid to the competitive behavior of parking options between two markets in traffic dynamic analysis in the literature. This paper investigates the parking supply and pricing strategies for a linear urban transportation network with both public and shared private parking spots. Firstly, we derive a user equilibrium in terms of departure time and mode-and-parking choice, with sufficient public parking spot provision. Secondly, we explore how the lack of public parking spots pushes some commuters to rent SPPSs and develop a mixed user equilibrium with an internal balance between SPPSs’ market demand and supply in case of inadequate public parking spots. Then, we further investigate how public parking spot provision and public parking fees affect commuters’ mode choice and departure time choice. Thirdly, we propose three management schemes: optimal public parking fee, optimal public parking spot provision, and joint optimization of public parking fee and public parking spot provision. Numerical results show that setting a proper public parking fee and providing sufficient public parking spot provision can effectively reduce total system cost. Moreover, the joint optimization scheme can further enhance the system performance in comparison to the other two management schemes.