The impact of a new public transport line on parking behavior

To reduce congestion problems in urban environments, policy makers around the world recognize the importance of public transport quality improvement, P&R facilities near peripheral public transport stops, and parking price incentives. This paper proposes a logit model to study the short-term and long-term impact of a new subway line in Amsterdam on the parking behavior. Three groups of travelers are defined in this research: (a) travelers inside Amsterdam, (b) travelers from Amsterdam to outside Amsterdam, and (c) travelers from outside to inside Amsterdam. From the model it is found that in the short term the subway line resulted in an increase in parking near the city center of Amsterdam, especially caused by commuters traveling from outside Amsterdam. However, one year later, the parking demand has dropped significantly which is possibly an effect from increased parking tariffs. Further, before the opening of the public transport line, higher parking tariffs lead to more parking near destination. Experiments with parking tariff cross-variable models reveal that parking tariffs consist of two underlying bi-modal distributions, which are the location of origin and destination with respect to Amsterdam, and whether the time period is during summer or autumn. Parking tariffs affect the parking behavior from and to Amsterdam. Another finding is that during the autumn parking tariffs significantly affect the parking behavior in the short-term. This model can be extended further with more specific location variables, continuing the parking tariffs research, and the addition of more trip, spatial and personal attributes