Abstract
Parking is a cumbersome part of auto travel because travelers have to search for a spot and walk from that spot to their final destination. This conventional method of parking will change with the arrival of autonomous vehicles (AV). In the near future, users of AVs get dropped off at their final destination and the occupant-free AVs search for the nearest and most convenient parking spot. Hence, individuals no longer bear the discomfort of cruising for parking while sitting in their vehicle. This paper quantifies the impact of AVs on parking occupancy and traffic flow on a corridor that connects a home zone to a downtown zone. The model considers a heterogeneous group of AVs and conventional vehicles (CV) and captures their parking behavior as they try to minimize their generalized travel costs. Insights are obtained from applying the model to two case studies with uniform and linear parking supply along the corridor. We show that (i) CVs park closer to the downtown zone in order to minimize their walking distance, whereas AVs park farther away from the downtown zone to minimize their parking search time, (ii) AVs experience a lower search time than CVs, and (iii) higher AV penetration rates reduce travel costs for both AVs and CVs.
Highlights
Autonomous vehicles (AV) drivers can use their vehicle as a personal valet where the AVs drop off their passengers and head off occupantfree to find a parking space. is paper quantifies the impact of AVs on parking occupancy and traffic flow on a corridor that connects a home zone to a downtown zone. e model considers a heterogeneous group of AVs and conventional vehicle (CV) and captures their parking behavior as they minimize their generalized travel costs. e model is solved using a finite element method that transforms the problem into a linear program that can be solved using the simplex method
Insights are obtained from two case studies with uniform and linear parking supply. e results of the model show that CVs park closer to the downtown zone because CV drivers cannot walk a long distance from where they park to their final destination
We show that AVs experience a lower search time than CVs. e maximum AV search time is lower than the minimum CV search time
Summary
We review the existing studies related to the impact of AVs on urban parking patterns. Autonomous vehicles are in the testing phase for many car manufacturers (including Audi, Ford, GM, Toyota, Nissan, Volvo, Volkswagen, BMW, and Cadilac) and technology investors. Motivated by the impact of AV parking, we provide a synopsis of the relevant literature on parking and we discuss the application of existing parking models on AVs. Provision of Level-5 autonomy is pursued by many car manufacturers including Tesla, Audi, Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Volvo, Volkswagen, BMW, and Cadilac, among many others. We use a similar strategy by imposing a constraint that restricts parking occupancy to be lower than (or equal to) parking supply at each facility With this assumption, we estimate the parking cruising cost at each parking facility
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