Transport and environmental effects of rail-based Park and Ride: evidence from the Netherlands

Park and Ride (PR i.e., some P&R users had been making the whole trip by public transport prior the introduction of the P&R facility. This paper uses the findings of a users survey (N = 738) conducted in nine rail-based P&Rs located around the cities of Rotterdam and The Hague (The Netherlands) in order to get an overview of the impacts in terms of the vehicle km travelled (VKT) and the vehicle emissions (CO2, NOx, PM10 and SO2) of this popular transport infrastructure. In comparison with the existing literature, a number of additional unintended effects have been found, namely ’abstraction from bike’ and ’Park and walk users’ of P&R facilities, which reinforce the ambiguity surrounding the impact of P&R. Additionally, large differences have been found between the net impact of P&Rs according to their function: remote P&Rs perform better than peripheral P&Rs. This study suggests that the introduction of a fee for parking would reduce the unintended effects. Finally, it presents a number of policy suggestions.