Evaluation of Environmental Benefits Caused by Reservation-Based Shared Parking: A Case Study of Beijing, China

With the help of accurate parking navigation systems, sharing vacant private parking spaces with public travelers may have the potential of reducing the number of cruising vehicles and contribute to traffic emission reduction. However, the quantitative effects of such a measure are still relatively unknown in traffic management. In this article, we firstly established an optimal allocation model of shared parking spaces, which is a pure integer linear programming model of maximizing the number of served public vehicles to avoid cruising for parking. Further, the parking space allocation model was expanded to an estimation model that quantifies the effect of emission reduction. Secondly, a branch-and-cut algorithm was introduced as the core algorithm to solve the proposed models. Finally, detailed sensitivity analysis, based on empirical data collected by electronic parking toll collections and questionnaire surveys in Beijing, China, evaluated the proposed model and algorithm. The results indicate that shared parking can not only effectively reduce the cruising time and the number of vehicles, but also has significantly a positive effect on emission reduction. This research is helpful to provide theoretical support for alleviating parking pressure and environmental problems.