Parking

As congestion within urban areas increases, parking becomes a much more important element of a local authorities transport strategy. PDC have extensive experience of working with clients to develop sustainable parking strategies and in understanding how parking provision can affect other elements such as modal choice. Much of our work in this area has involved market research to investigate people’s perceptions. In recent years our capability has expanded with the development of our Activity Based Parking Model functionality within our transport modelling software Visual-tm. This now enables parking choices to be connected to the other traveller choices such as mode and destination and enables the impact of parking strategies to be investigated in the wider context.

Here are some brief details about some projects we have conducted in this area.

Truro Parking Model Development

Date : 2006

PDC worked with Cornwall County Council and Carrick District Council to undertake a study to develop a Major Scheme bid for a new substantially improved park and ride service in Truro. A key component of the traffic and revenue implications of the scheme was what happens to the useage and revenue from the existing car parks in Truro. A consideration is the sources and useage of the revenue. Revenue from parking goes to the District and revenue for the major scheme could go to the County. Each Authority needs to know the size of the various revenue streams, the impact on current revenue streams and the relative balance of revenue between the Authorities so that the revenue streams can be planned in advance and agreed.

PDC built a revolutionary activity based parking model which would enable these elements to be analysed. The model deals with each individual traveller and each individual parking space and enables the district to test a wide range of parking strategies such as the balance between short and long stay car parks, tariff structures, traffic access arrangements etc. The model is planned to be connected to the Major scheme 4 stage model so that the impact of the parking strategies can be seen in the wider context.


Lynton and Lynmouth Traffic and Parking Study

Date: 1997

Lynton and Lynmouth, in the north Devon coast, experience severe problems during the tourist season with traffic touring the streets of the town looking for parking spaces, which are in short supply. The popularity of the towns is, in effect, creating serious problems, which it was feared could drive people from the area to other more accessible towns.

The National Park Authority and the local councils wished to investigate possible solutions to the problem and the first phase of the study was the collection of basic data. This was done by Peter Davidson Consultancy (PDC), in the peak tourist season in August 1997. Data was collected for a weekday and a Sunday. This data consisted of automatic traffic counts, manual classified traffic counts, video camera traffic survey, interviews with people arriving in the car parks and interviews with bus passengers, all over a 12 hour period (0800 - 2000). Over 1400 interviews were collected from visitors to the towns.


 


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