Parking Surveys

Parking surveys can be undertaken to provide information on the demand for parking around existing facilities, on-street or off-street, to provide an understanding of the demand for parking, duration of stay and turnover of parking.

This information can be used to plan for the expansion of the facility or improvements and redesign of the parking facilities including new parking controls such as parking duration limits, access control etc. The results of surveys at a particular location can also be used as an indicator of parking demands for a similar planned facility.

Techniques that can be used to undertake parking studies include:

• Parking Supply Studies: this study would typically be a pre-cursor to further studies discussed below.
  The study would typically gather information on:
  o  Number of parking spaces;
  o  Type of parking (cars, taxis, trucks etc) including any restrictions on parking,
     say by time of day or costs of parking;
  o  Off-street parking facilities including access controls and costs;
  o  Any access restrictions, including pedestrian access.
  

• Parking Accumulation Study: this type of study simply measures the number of vehicles entering or leaving a parking area and thus allows an estimate to be made of the overall parking demand by time of day for the survey period. This type of surely would be applicable to a large off-street car park, say associated with a shopping centre, where the parking area is serviced by a limited number of access roads.
  

• Parking Duration Study: The range of parking durations of vehicles parking within a car park or area can be observed by mapping the parking area to be surveyed and then having an observer noting the occupation of each parking bay at regular intervals. The shorter the time interval between each cycle allows the parking durations to be noted more accurately but of course this additional accuracy will come at an additional cost due to the need for additional staff to allow the additional observations to be made.
  

• Interview surveys: If more extensive data is required on the origin and/or destination of people using the car parking facility interview surveys may be useful. These surveys can be undertaken by:
  o  On-site interviews of people using the parking. This method requires significant staffing and also the cooperation of the people using the parking. Interviews need to be quick and relatively painless if there is to be any significant participation achieved;
  o Reply paid questionnaires. Again the questionnaires need to be short and easily completed. Nevertheless it can be expected that limited responses will be received. This type of survey may be more successful where there is a captive survey group such as where a survey is undertaken of employees using an employee car park or surrounding streets.
  

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