Shared-Parking Turn-Time (SPaTT) Model for Analyzing Parking Stress in Urban Commercial Area

Lack of parking space in such zones may affect an urban area negatively such as the occurrence of illegal parking. Increasing number of illegal on-street parking reflects parking insufficiency in a particular commercial zone. This creates urban parking stress. Parking supply and demand model can be developed to examine the existence of this phenomenon. This study aims at examining the existence of parking stress using Geographic Information System (GIS) by taking a small town in Malaysia as a case study. We developed a quantitative technique based on Shared-Parking Turn-Time (SPaTT) model and used GIS to estimate and map supply and demand gap of parking space within the urban commercial area. Spatial data were acquired from various sources and digitally constructed to form a spatial database of parking supply and demand of that area. The study adopted interview and observation method to obtain attribute data to run the SPaTT model. Supply and demand calculations of parking space were made according to six time blocks in order to estimate parking equilibrium for each time block during weekdays and weekends. The results were then analysed using ArcView GIS 3.3 software to display areas exhibiting parking stress or otherwise abundance. This study disclosed that there was no evidence of acute parking stress in the study area. In other words, there was sufficient parking space in most sections of the urban commercial area. However, the study recommended some parking policies and standards, additional shared-parking space, increasing public transportation services, and real-time parking information in order to reduce parking stress in a particular area at a particular time.