The perception of the urban parking problem

Abstract Parking is an important part of urban traffic and consequently an important factor for the well-being of a city. However, in urban areas parking causes more and more problems which re-quire a goal-oriented and efficient parking policy. In order to implement a policy a consensus about the parking problem is important. So far there has not been fundamental research about the perception of the urban parking problem. This thesis investigates the consensus among experts of the parking world on various issues around the parking problem in France. It is a continuing research to a previous research conducted in the Netherlands. The issues investigated are:  Parking pricing and the provision of free parking  Importance of the availability of parking spaces as a location factor for businesses  Parking regimes in residential areas  General impact of parking on urban traffic  The collection and the allocation of parking revenues  The parking shortage and the prioritizing of user groups  The future development of parking facilities  The perception on the definition of parking policy. The issues are investigated with an online survey. Respondents were asked to rate on a five point Likert scale to what extent they agree to a statement. Thereafter, the results were ana-lysed with SPSS frequency analysis and cross tabulation analysis. Further, the strength of consensus measurement has been applied in order to facilitate the interpretation of the Likert scale. In addition the survey results have been compared to the results from the previously conducted Dutch survey. The results showed that there are no fundamental differences in the perception between dif-ferent roles as well as between the different countries.