Geert Tasseron

Studies have shown that up to thirty percent of all
traffic in crowded urban areas can be cruising for parking.
Information provision to drivers can potentially decrease cruising
time for individual drivers and subsequently improve the
performance of the overall system. While most cities provide
drivers with information on the occupancy rates of off-street
parking facilities, information on single on-street parking
places was non-existing until recently. Recent technological
advances have made it possible to provide such information.
The aim of this paper is to study the impacts of such
bottom-up information provision about on-street parking
places for the individual driver as well as the system as a
whole. Using an agent-based simulation model, impacts are
compared between a bottom-up vehicle-to-vehicle communication
strategy and a strategy that combines parking
sensors and vehicle-to-vehicle communication. In the latter
approach on-street parking places are equipped with
sensors capable of disseminating their occupancy status. Contrary to expectations based on theory, the results
show that, for both strategies, search time is barely
decreased and sometimes even increased. Performance in
terms of walking distance using a vehicle-to-vehicle communication
strategy is only improved in situations with
almost full on-street occupancy levels. In contrast, when
a sensor strategy is applied, walking distance is reduced
under all conditions.
The main conclusion is that the societal benefits of bottom-
up information provision are not clear from the outset.