One of the most effective traffic demand management measures is parking management (paid parking zones, limitation of parking duration, residents' parking privilege, environment- oriented parking fees etc.). A big problemarises due to the limitation of these regulations to public space. In many western cities the share of private parking slots, especially those of shopping centres and commuter car parks, exceeds those on public roads. This fact makes parking management schemes less effective and calls for new instruments to limit the car traffic to a level that helps to avoid congestion. Mainly two options are being considered: Any type of congestion pricing or extension of parking management strategies to private car parks. To investigate the latter, a study was conducted to identify possible alternative solutions and to evaluate the impacts and effects on traffic demand, because there are only few examples for this type of measures in real life. The following main options were analysed in the Case Study for the Vienna Region: (1) Obligatory pay parking schemes for shopping centres and other privately owned large car parks; this could be managed by a parking fee for customers or a parking slot fee per offered space levied by the operator. The revenues could be handed to a regional authority (e.g. in form of an environmental protection or council accessibility tax); (2) Obligatory limitation of car trips to shopping centres by a defined trip quota, depending on air pollution; and (3) Obligatory limitation of the maximum numberof parking slots, depending on the accessibility by public transport and/or on air pollution. The behavioural changes of car users and effects on operators and developers as well as the general acceptance and attitudes were investigated by stated preference analysis and interactive in-depth interviews with different target populations. The stated preference analysis indicates that a very effective change of travel behaviour is possible, with a relatively strong user-price-elasticity for car drivers. That means that a shift from car to other modes can be observed, depending on the quality of accessibility of the alternative modes and of the travel purpose. It is evident that parking management for private car parks is only effective if the public road space in the vicinity is included in the parking management scheme. In the long run, undesirable migration-of-enterprises-effects can be expected and might lead to urban sprawl, if the area of the parking management scheme is too small. One can draw the conclusion that parking management for private car parks is a promising and successful instrument to mitigate traffic congestion if specific framework conditions are taken into account. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.
Samenvatting