1. Topic

2. Introduction

Park and ride schemes form an important part of a multi modal transport strategy. They are most commonly associated with heavy or light rail networks, but can also be used effectively with bus services.

3. Discussion

For park and ride schemes to be successful it is most effective to have large ‘strategic’ park and ride sites. These are generally located near to the edge of large conurbations close to major trunk roads and railway lines in order to attract as many car drivers as possible. Typically these sites have 500 or more parking spaces and serve a wide area. In cases where the rail network cannot adequately serve these sites an additional bus service may be provided. The creation of these strategic sites requires very significant investment that is often planned over many years. For example some city transport strategies include the objective of identifying and constructing one strategic park and ride site every 2 years for a prolonged period. In addition many park and ride schemes require the public transport schemes serving them to be heavily subsidised in order to promote their use. This results in very significant operating costs for these schemes.

The idea behind park and ride schemes is to attract car users who would have driven into the centre of the city to use the park and ride facility instead. However, it is important to recognise the risk that travellers who would have made their entire journey by public transport may also switch to using the park and ride facility. This then results in a journey that would have been made entirely using public transport being made mostly by car. It is very difficult to prevent this from occurring, although careful sitting of the site can assist.

In addition to these major strategic park and ride schemes, it is useful to provide high levels of parking at local rail stations to supplement the strategic sites.

P&R is theoretically able to combine advantages of a high-quality public transport system in densely populated cities with those of the car in more thinly populated areas where public transport is not highly developed. However, despite the growing accessibility problems, already existing P&Rs do not always attract the intended number of car drivers.

4. Recommendation / Conclusion

Park and ride sites are an important mechanism for reducing the use of private motor cars in city centres. The most effective schemes typically feature multiple strategic parking sites that can be accessed from all major roads into the city. Frequent and fast public transport services must be provided to these sites for the scheme to be successful.

Moreover, in order to build more attractive P&R facilities, insight into the car drivers’ preferences with respect to transfer from car to public transport is required.

The question is how car drivers weigh the different P&R characteristics and how these characteristics affect their choices.

Some key requisites of a P&R site are summarised in the conclusions of the EU MIMIC Project:

• Limited walking distance (not exceeding 100 meters): good practices in Strasbourg (tram station), Paris (La Defense), Rome (Laurentina); normally multilevel parking satisfy better this requisite that may be reached also with the support of “tapis roulant” or lifts;
• Protection of the walking path from sun and rain: good practices in Strasbourg (tram station), Paris (La Defense);
• Increase of security feeling by means of barriers around the parking and surveillance by personnel;
• Continuous availability of parking slots for coming vehicles thanks to the generous dimensions of parking areas: park & ride user must feel the certainty to find a free slot whenever approaching the parking;
• Availability of short stops clearly identified areas (kiss & ride areas) as much as possible functionally and physically separated by the park & ride areas and
• Safety and security of the P&R: people need to have the feeling that it is save to leave your car in the parking lot, and need to feel safe walking around the parking lot.

Pricing is of the utmost importance to make a P&R scheme work. Free parking and/or free Public Transport Services or combined ticketing and pricing can mean a strong boost for the use of the P&R. Price setting can be related to off peak and peak moments in the use of the P&R.

5. Examples / Further Reading

Oxford, UK

Oxford has 5 strategic park and ride sites situated around the outskirts of the city. Four of these have bus services, and the fifth a heavy rail service into the city centre. These services stop at various destinations on the journey into the city. The bus / train services are extremely frequent, typically every 10 or 15 minutes, and the journey into the city typically takes 10 to 15 minutes.

In Oxford traffic levels in the city centre have fluctuated since 1974, but not increased. Over this period car ownership and use have increased in the City’s suburbs and elsewhere in Oxfordshire. A gradual increase in park and ride capacity over the same period has offered a means of providing for traffic growth without constructing new roads or increasing parking capacity in the city centre. This has allowed the retail and tourist trades within the City to increase over this period.

Milan, Italy

Milan has an underground rail network which features large car parking provision at the outlying stations. Intelligent electronic ticketing is used to automatically charge for car parking and travel on the underground rail network via a single electronic tag.

Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Three experiments were constructed:

• an experiment to evaluate the quality of P&R facilities;
• an experiment to evaluate the quality of the public transport;
• an integrative experiment in which respondents are asked to make a choice between P&R, car and public transport alternatives.

The data were gained by postal questionnaires. Most remarkable is that the quality of P&R facilities is most influenced by safety aspects, such as supervision, safe pedestrian route and maintenance. The quality of additional public transport is most affected by the probability of a seat. Finally, time considerations are most important in the P&R choice decision, but also costs and quality of P&R facilities and additional public transport were important. In future data will be gathered by a questionnaire on the Internet: car drivers across the whole country are reached in this way. In this experiment, more attention will be given to the validity of the applied approach.

Template Examples are available: from Bristol on Example of Car Parks and Park and Ride– Bristol and Utrecht on Car Parking - Park and Ride.

6. Additional Documents / Web Links

· Bos I.D.M. - Modelling car drivers’ behaviour towards Park and Ride facilities – PHD Thesis (Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Department of Transport Policy and Logistics Organisation, Delft University of Technology), 2003.

Other examples in EU Projects:

• CENTAUR: Barcelona (Spain) and Bristol (UK).
• JUPITER-2: Merseyside (United Kingdom).
• MIMIC: Vienna (Austria), Copenhagen (Denmark), Paris and Strasbourg (France), Berlin and Frankfurt am Main (Germany), Rome (Italy), Rotterdam (The Netherlands), Lund and Stockholm (Sweden), Zurich (Switzerland), Cardiff, Leeds, London and Sheffield (United Kingdom).
• SAGITTAIRE: Bruges and Leuven (Belgium), Trento (Italy), Luxembourg (Luxembourg), Stavanger (Norway) and Sintra (Portugal)
• ZEUS: Athens (Greece).

Last Updated

25th January 2005