Alternative Approach for Forecasting Parking Volumes

Parking is an issue at the forefront of transportation planning in the core of any urban area. As public and private sectors invest in city development, particularly in the high density and mixed-use central business districts, forecasting parking volumes for multiple facilities throughout urban transformation is critical to parking supply decision-making. Most previous studies have limitations that may yield inaccurate predictions and cannot precisely analyze the impact to area parking facilities, due to model simplicity and limited data accessibility. In order to provide accurate estimation with detailed information and account for technological improvements in data availability, this study provides an alternative method by utilizing an assignment model with a generalized cost approach. This enables more detailed information of forecasting parking volumes and assessing parking accessibility with consideration of shared parking and time-of-day distribution of parking demand. A case study was conducted in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee providing a sensitivity analysis for investigating the effects of parameters in the model. The sensitivity analysis includes parking generation rates, walking speed, and cruising time. Additionally, the results of three alternative scenarios are provided to show the advantages of this model to examine the impact of parking facility development on adjacent facilities. Manual adjustments and surveys may be required to apply this model for other cities, but it would provide more useful information for their (policymakers, developers, and planners) decision making. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.