Exploring en-route parking type and parking-search route choice: decision making framework and survey design

Parking choice behavior has been widely investigated from several perspectives, including parking type and parking facility choice, parking search duration, joint choice of travel mode, destination and parking facility, and parking stall choice. This paper contributes to the literature by investigating the combined en-route choice of parking type and driving route during the search for a parking place. Notably, the joint decision of a parking space and parking search route choice is essentially different according to the parking type. In the case that a decision is made to park on-street, individuals decide upon a parking-search starting point and then develop a search route in the vicinity of their destination until they find an available parking space, subject to parking stall size and spatiotemporal constraints. In the case that a decision is made to park off-street, individuals engage in a sequence of parking facility choice followed by route choice to the chosen parking facility. This paper discusses the first phase of the research, namely the challenges related to data collection and joint modeling of parking place and route search. The experimental design includes a two-wave survey consisting of a self-reported parking search behavior by means of a memory jogger, followed by a three-day GPS-based survey. Both habitual commuting trips and non habitual trips will be investigated, in order to understand the influence of trip conditions and motivations. The self-reported data and the variability of the choices for the same traveler will suggest which alternative routes and parking places are considered. In both waves data will be retrieved concerning trip characteristics (e.g., purpose, destination, number of passengers), parking type and parking search process (e.g., route length and angularity, driving speed, parking-search duration, parking location), individual socio-economic characteristics and latent traits that are relevant to parking-search route choice (e.g., time saving skills, spatial orientation, memory and habits). The survey will be conducted in a high-technology industrial compound in the suburbs of the Tel-Aviv metropolitan area. The model framework assumes different choice mechanisms for on-street and off-street route choice. On-street parking-search behavior is hypothesized to be a myopic "run and tumble" search, in which a search direction is chosen at each intersection. In addition, the parking-search path set is constrained by parking fee, search duration and walking time to the destination. Given the consideration set, the route choice is assumed to be positively related to abundance of parking spaces and intensive parking activity. In contrast, the decision to park off-street is a nested decision, involving parking facility choice followed by route choice. Parking facility choice depends on the facility's characteristics such as cost, access and egress delays and proximity to the destination. Upon choosing a parking facility, route choice to the facility is assumed to be premeditated according to a rational decision mechanism such as the shortest path, and is postulated to be positively related to shorter travel time, lower congestion levels, lower numbers of turns, and use of major roads.