Urban parking space reservation through bottom-up information provision: An agent-based analysis

Abstract The aim of this paper is to study the impacts of a reservation system for on-street parking. Such a system provides drivers looking for on-street parking with information on available parking spaces, thereby possibly reducing the need to cruise for parking and the accompanying negative externalities. The performance of the proposed system is studied using a highly detailed spatial agent-based simulation. The results of the simulations show that users of a reservation system benefit in terms of reduced search time and reduced walking distance under virtually all simulated circumstances. However, societal benefits are not as clear-cut. The benefit in search time for the users of the system comes at a cost to the regular drivers, which see a nearly identical increase in search time. In contrast, the positive impact on walking distance hardly influences walking distance for regular drivers. Hence, we conclude that the introduction of a reservation system for on-street parking results in a more efficient distribution of available parking spaces among drivers searching for parking.