Parking pricing vs. congestion pricing: a macroscopic analysis of their impact on traffic

This paper focuses on parking pricing and congestion pricing and their short-term effects not only on traffic congestion but also on the potential revenue for a city. We develop a multimodal macroscopic traffic and parking search model based on aggregated data at the network level. Our methodology allows us to analyze how introducing parking pricing inside a network, or a congestion toll combined with a park and ride (P+R) scheme can affect the drivers’ decision between entering the network by car or using P+R. This decision directly influences the number of drivers using P+R, and this impacts, in turn, the traffic performance. We illustrate our proposed framework in a case study of an area with a high parking demand for public parking spaces within the city of Zurich, Switzerland. Results show that parking pricing combined with P+R is indeed a viable option compared to congestion pricing for improving traffic performance.