Optimal dynamic pricing for morning commute parking

Abstract

Morning commute parking is a challenging issue for both commuters and transportation planners. This paper proposes a procedure to maximise the benefits of parking management by optimal dynamic parking pricing. A generic parking model is presented for a set of sequential parking areas. Travellers make parking location choices and departure time choices to minimise their generalised travel cost, when provided with either information regarding time-varying parking occupancies and prices, or after sufficient day-to-day parking experience. We consider expected parking cruising time to be a function of parking occupancy. When parking demand is inflexible in departing schedules, we demonstrate that the system optimal (SO) pricing solution is not unique. The non-uniqueness offers flexibility to achieve additional parking management goals by dynamic prices, such as constant arrival rates (CAR). For the case where travellers have full flexibility to change their departure times, the SO solution is not practically achievable. We propose the CAR solution where the total cost is minimised constrained by that the arrival rates to each area exactly match a desired rate (e.g. flow capacity). We show that each parking area should be priced in such a way that a maximum occupancy cap should be imposed. Convenient parking spots should be high priced at the beginning of the morning commute and saved for the peak traffic. In addition, we derive the optimal parking prices with respect to average occupancies, which holds potentials to guide parking price adjustment for traffic management.