Level of service for on-street parking

Parking of vehicle is one of the most important issues of the urban transportation system in any Central Business District (CBD). A sharp rise in vehicular ownership and insufficient transit system give rise to the huge on-street parking demand leading to a reduction in effective carriageway width, flow speed, creating unnecessary congestion, etc. The problems can be controlled by providing an efficient parking system. The present study aims to estimate the Level of Service (LOS) of on-street parking. LOS is calculated based on three parking selection criteria, viz. Parking Characteristic (PC), Safety Characteristic (SC) and Design Characteristic (DC). Four CBDs of Kolkata Metropolitan Area (KMA) are selected as a case study area. The overall LOS equation is formulated by Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Cluster analysis and Zero dimension process are used to standardize the variables to designated LOS. Various surveys are carried out for data collection. The data are analyzed using SPSS. Finally, the overall LOS for on-street parking is estimated for all the selected CBDs.