Shared parking

Abstract: Considering a parking platform with multiple slot demanders and multiple slot suppliers, this paper addresses two truthful double auction mechanisms for shared parking problem, where the demanders targeted by the proposed mechanisms are with flexible schedules and for non-work activities, and the suppliers are with the typical daily ‘driving go out early and come back at dusk’ pattern. To provide flexible match schemes and increase the trading scale, we allow “all-or-nothing” principle for demanders and “one-to-many” principle for suppliers. Based on the parking slot allocation rule and the transaction payment rule, we first relax the single output restriction (suppliers can only submit bids on a single unit of one commodity) and propose a “demander competition padding method (DC-PM)” auction mechanism, which is used to solve potential budget deficit. To avoid the likely distorted social welfare resulted by the DC-PM auction mechanism and to add budget surplus, we further modify the parking slot allocation rule and the transaction payment rule in the DC-PM auction mechanism, and propose a “modified demander competition padding method (MDC-PM)” auction mechanism. Three economical properties of both auction mechanisms, i.e. incentive compatibility, individual rationality and budget balance, are proved. Numerical experiments show that the proposed two auction mechanisms can realize asymptotic efficiency as both demanders and suppliers approach infinity. Moreover, the DC-PM auction mechanism is superior to the MDC-PM auction mechanism with respect to participants’ utilities and can maintain the strict lexicographic allocation order, and the MDC-PM auction mechanism outperforms the DC-PM auction mechanism in terms of welfare efficiency and platform's payoff. Issues of managerial implications for shared parking problem are further discussed in this paper.

Abstract: This paper addresses the private parking slot sharing problem during regular working hours in a big city. Our results extend the existing market design theory so that money flow is allowed in the matching mechanisms. We consider two cases of money flow: (i) one agent who fails to exchange his parking slot can join the leasing mechanism as a lessor; and (ii) one agent who fails in parking slot exchange can always “transfer” (rent) his parking slots to the platform. Each agent is self-interested. We propose the (price-compatible) top trading cycles and deals (TTCD) mechanism for case (i) and the price-compatible top trading cycles and chains (PC-TTCC) mechanism for case (ii). Both mechanisms are effective in terms of the compatibility with money flow, agents’ welfare, and strategy-proofness. Our experimental results further show that the proposed mechanisms would result in remarkable social welfare, and (ex post) budget balance for the platform in a big city with large population. In some realistic settings, our proposed mechanisms can almost realize cost saving of 60% and make more than 50% of agents strictly better off. There is no private parking slot sharing in the benchmark case. Overall, this paper opens the door to the solutions of a host of price-compatible matching problems.

Abstract: Many parking shortages could be eliminated by better managing available parking rather than building additional parking facilities. This book excerpt discusses the concept of parking management and how specific parking management strategies can significantly reduce the number of parking spaces required in a particular situation. Parking management strategies fall into three categories: strategies that increase the efficiency of parking facilities; strategies that reduce parking demand; and support strategies that improve information, marking and enforcement. Although parking management represents a fundamental change in how the parking problem is perceived and how solutions are evaluated, the benefits can include more efficient land use, increased revenue and reduced transportation system costs.

Abstract: This paper studies the traffic flow patterns in a single bottleneck corridor with a dynamic ridesharing mode and dynamic parking charges. Schemes with different ridesharing payments and shared parking prices are investigated. Besides the scheme with constant parking charges and ridesharing payments, dynamic parking charges and ridesharing payments are derived to achieve congestion-free traffic in the corridor. With the dynamic ridesharing ratios, it is found that genuinely nonlinear departure rates and travel time functions can be generated in certain ridesharing cases, which was not observed in the traditional ADL model (Arnott et al., 1990) for the morning commute problems without ridesharing or with constant ridesharing ratios. Moreover, comparing different configurations of ridesharing arrangements and parking charges, the results show that constant parking charges with constant ridesharing payments may not significantly improve system performance over the traditional morning commute with solo-drivers, while dynamic parking charges with properly selected constant ridesharing payments can achieve better system performance in terms of vehicle-miles-traveled, vehicle-hours-traveled and total travel costs, by encouraging ridesharing and spreading vehicular demand over time to eliminate queuing delays.