A LOCATION MODEL FOR THE ALLOCATION OF THE OFF-STREET PARKING FACILITIES

Abstract

In this study, an application of the location theory on the allocation of the off-street parking facilities is explored. A multi-objective linear Integer Programming model is developed for this problem. Due to its linearity, the proposed compromise programming method for the model can be solved by the LINDO compute software. Based on the results of the numerical experiment, the proposed model can provide reasonable solution to the problem addressed. The following information can be provided by the proposed solution procedure for the decision makers to determine the locations of the off-street parking facilities: the optimal locations of facilities, the demands served by each facility, and the optimal type for each of the selected parking facilities. With the rapid increase in the car ownership per household and the urban population, in the newly developed industrial country, the mass use of the private car in the metropolitan area results in a serious parking problem with limited land resource. The more the city is urbanized, the more serious the parking situation is for the city. To develop an effective procedure to allocate appropriate space for the parking facility is a crucial task for the urban planner and the associated traffic agencies. With the scarce land resource in the urban area, the use the non-parking public facilities as the potential candidates of the parking facilities is a promising alternative for the metropolitan decision maker. With the relative high land cost in the urban area, it will be a waste for the public investment, if the public facilities do not used for multiple purposes. The use of the existing public facility as a parking facility, it will not only reduce the public resistance for buying their land, but also decrease the additional investment for the land cost. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop an efficient procedure to allocate the off-street parking facilities in the existing public facilities as the reference basis for the decision making process. In the current parking practice, the allocation of the off-street parking facilities is often based on the ratio between forecast parking demand and supply. The facility location theory has seldom been applied to this type of problem. In this study, we explore the application of the facility location theory on the off-street parking facility locations. A suitable location model is developed to deal with the allocation of the public off-street parking facilities. In the previous studies dealt with the parking problem, Kanafani (1972) treated the behavior of the parking system as a distribution process. He developed a gravity-type model to forecast the potential parking demand for each parking facility. The allocation of the parking facility is