Spatially explicit modeling of parking search as a tool for urban parking facilities and policy assessment Nadav Levy a , Marc Render b , Itzhak Benenson c,n a The Porter School of Environmental Studies, Tel-Aviv University, Israel b AMAV Transportation and Traffic Planning Ltd., Jerusalem, Israel c Department of Geography and Human Environment, Tel Aviv University, Israel article info Article history: Received 17 February 2014 Received in revised form 23 December 2014 Accepted 16 January 2015 Available online 24 January 2015 Keywords: Urban parking Transportation planning Agent-based modeling Scenario assessment abstract The engineering view of a measurable, supply-independent, demand for parking that can be expressed by “minimum parking codes” has been generally rejected during the last two decades and is gradually being replaced by “maximum provision” codes, limited parking development, and demand pricing. To assess new planning practices one has to estimate the drivers' reaction to proposed spatial–temporal parking limitations. The paper applies a high-resolution spatially explicit agent-based model termed “PARKAGENT” as a tool for this assessment. The model is used for evaluation of parking demand in the Diamond Exchange area in Ramat Gan, a city in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, for estimating the ef- fectiveness of planned parking facilities for different development scenarios in the area and assessing electronic signage system that directs drivers to vacant parking lots. The results strongly indicate the advantages of agent-based modeling over the current dominant engineering approach and show the potential benefits of using an intelligent parking guidance system. & 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Urban parking policy revolution: from satisfying demand to regulating car usage in the city Parking, in the practical engineering view, is seen as a utility to be supplied based on measurable demand. For various land uses, such as a large shopping center, high tech park, or restaurants, common sense procedures based on surveys are sufficient for es- timating demand. For example, parking demand generated from an office building is usually estimated based on usable floor area, factors for employees and visitors per unit of floor area, and the percentage of employees and visitors using cars to get to the office. In other cases, the number of students in a college or number of chairs in an auditorium can serve as a basis for estimating the demand for parking. The classic survey of this sort is published by the Institute of Traffic Engineers (USA) “Trip Generation Manual” now in its 9th edition. The manual contains trip generation rates for private cars for hundreds of land uses, from drive-in banks to sports stadiums. By calculating the demand for car trips at differ- ent times of the day it is possible then to calculate the parking supply needed to satisfy this demand. In order to further standardize parking provision and avoid the need for further surveys, cities and states created parking “codes” that, similar to the surveys, set up a number of parking places to be provided by land uses. The first residential parking requirement originated in Columbus, Ohio in 1923 – one parking place per apartment. In 1939 the city of Fresno California created the first non-residential parking requirement for hospitals and hotels, in parallel to the 1939 German Reichsgaragenordnung (Order on Garages of the Third Reich) which introduced off street parking regulations to Germany and Austria (Knoflacher, 2006). A wide- spread adaptation of standardized parking codes started in 1950s, with the lofty goal to “alleviate or prevent traffic congestion and shortages of curbside parking places” (parking code of Pasadena, California, http://greatergreater.com/files/200802/nnzoningparking.pdf ). These codes specify the number of parking places per unit of a floor area, for example of a regional shopping center, local commercial areas, banks, etc. Estimating parking demand then becomes a matter of arithmetic that translates a building program to parking places to be provided for both employees and visitors according to the proposed land use. In this standard view, a lack of parking at a facility planned in accordance with a standard type parking code indicates a need to revise the code upwards. This was the case for many years in Is- rael, with the minimum provision of parking for a residential unit being adjusted consistently upwards from 0.5 or 0.75 places per unit to 2.0 places in many cases today. The critical assumption of the above approach – an ability to supply unlimited amount of parking, is now obviously proble- matic. Besides space limitations (that can be overcome at great Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tranpol Transport Policy http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2015.01.004 0967-070X/& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. n Corresponding author. Fax: þ972 6406243. E-mail address: bennya@post.tau.ac.il (I. Benenson). Transport Policy 39 (2015) 9–20