Built Environment and Parking Availability: Impacts on Car Ownership and Use

Chaoying Yin,Chunfu Shao,Xiaoquan Wang

doi:10.3390/su10072285

Abstract

Along with urbanization and economic development, the number of private cars has increased rapidly in recent years in China, which contributes to concerns about traffic congestion, hard parking, energy consumption, and emissions. This study aims to investigate the joint effect of built environment and parking availability on car ownership and use based on a household travel survey conducted in Changchun, China. The binary logistic model was first employed to investigate the determinants of the car ownership in Changchun. Next, this study examined the potential impacts of the built environment and parking availability on car use for the journey to work. The result shows that built environment and parking availability can be both significantly associated with car ownership and use after controlling for the socio-economic characteristics. Moreover, in contrast with the model ignoring the parking availability, the model for car use considering the joint effect fit the data better. The results indicate that car dependency depends on the joint effect of the built environment and parking availability. These results suggest that transit-oriented urban expansion and compact land use can contribute to reducing car commuting. Meanwhile, parking restrictions at both trip start and end would be effective for sustainable transport because parking oversupply could encourage more car dependency.

Highlights

In China, concerns about transportation energy consumption and emissions force the government to promote sustainable urbanization and combat the economic, environmental, energy, and safety issues that go with rapid motorization [1]
The third model only revealed the influence of built environment and socio-economic characteristics on car use for the journey to work as comparison, whereas parking availability was considered in the final model
This study explored the joint effect of the built environment and parking availability on car ownership and use under a rapidly urbanizing and motorizing context of Changchun, China

Summary

Introduction

In China, concerns about transportation energy consumption and emissions force the government to promote sustainable urbanization and combat the economic, environmental, energy, and safety issues that go with rapid motorization [1]. Few studies focus on the influence of the built environment on car ownership and use in developing countries, especially in small and mid-sized cities. The existing studies conducted in western countries can provide few policy implications for the small and mid-sized cities in China, where car ownership and use are still growing constantly. Previous studies rarely take into account intentions of households without cars in purchasing one. In small and mid-sized cities in China, many households still cannot afford to purchase a car [16]. Existing studies exploring the influence of built environment on car dependency rarely take into account the parking availability, which may lead to mis-understanding of the role the built environment plays [17]. To the best of our knowledge, few efforts have been made to account for this influence [13,18]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion