Park & Ride is a technique increasingly used by local authorities as a means of alleviating the problems caused by excess demand for town centre parking facilities. The provision of increasing numbers of town centre parking spaces, whether on or off-street, encourages more motorists to drive into a town centre which, in turn, can result in a congested road network at certain times of the day. The provision of Park & Ride can, however, be a financial burden on the local community as most schemes do not recover their full economic cost through the collection of bus fares or car park charges from users. TRL has been commissioned to undertake a study of the effectiveness of bus-based Park & Ride. Part of this study has involved a survey of some local authorities to determine the operational and financial performance of their schemes. In addition, a detailed study in four towns has been carried out to determine: (i) the factors which encourage/discourage a motorist to use Park & Ride; (ii) the level of usage made of Park & Ride by individual motorists and (iii) the effect of Park & Ride in reducing town centre traffic congestion. This report details the results obtained from this study. (A)
Abstract