Optimal allocation of shared parking slots considering parking unpunctuality under a platform-based management approach

Abstract

An effective way to solve the parking difficulty is to utilize idle private parking slots as temporary parking supplies under the shared parking mode. A platform-based management approach can make reasonable use of parking slots by gathering the parking time windows of owners and consumers in advance. However, the actual parking time is difficult to be consistent with that registered on the platform. Owners and consumers may be unpunctual when arriving and departing. The parking unpunctuality is a stochastic factor and affects the allocation of parking slots. This paper focuses on how to model and optimize the parking unpunctuality in the shared parking slot allocation problem. We formulate the parking probability function of consumers and owners in different time slots and transform the stochastic programming model into an expectation model. It is found that in a certain time slot, the optimal number of idle parking slot reserved is related to the probability of unpunctuality, as well as the number of cars registered to arrive and depart in the neighboring time slots. The numerical experiments indicate that when considering the parking unpunctuality, the allocation is less compact; the satisfaction of consumers is decreased, especially when the supply is limited or the consumer demands are excessive. In the middle and later periods throughout the daytime, parking slots are more likely to be overloaded.