Analysing parking behaviours and suggesting parking policies for the application area

Roads enable access to public spaces, that is, structures and facilities divided by boulevards, streets, and avenues, which are limited areas of transportation for pedestrians, motor and non-motor vehicles in urban life. They enable transportation and also have a direct relationship with the neighbouring structures and facilities as far as infrastructure and superstructure are concerned. For this reason, roads have material and immaterial functions at the same time. Due to the increased income, which has rendered vehicles more accessible for most, the number of public and private vehicles increased at a great pace. Even though owning a vehicle brings a significant social status and convenience to one's life, that also means more fossil fuel consumption, air pollution, thicker traffic, and increase in traffic accidents. One of the consequences of increase in owning a motor vehicle and lack of a proper urban planning manifests itself in the form of a radical requirement for stop and stopover facilities. In transportation infrastructure, vehicles satisfy stop and stopover requirements at parking areas, which are classified into two primary categories by location. The first category is off-street parking areas where vehicles are parked at off-street facilities. They may be indoor, outdoor, underground or above the ground. They are provided within urban planning despite high construction costs. The second category is on-the-road parking spaces, which are situated on a roadway or pedestrian way partially borrowed from the road. On-the-road parking areas are limited spaces; and existing facilities should be considered as scarce and valuable sources in transportation infrastructures. Within overall parking spaces, on-the-road parking spaces are always high in demand simply because people tend and want to reach the target destination quickly after parking their car by the road. Considering the current tendency to own a car and lack of infrastructure that fails to respond to increasing tendency, it is projected that driving in the city will be practically impossible in not-so-far future. We can, however, minimise the negativity with a set of arrangements and regulations. These arrangements and regulations are named "Parking Policies". Three different perspectives come to light regarding parking policies. They can be implemented in combination, or alone. The first approach is the conventional approach. Linked with the function of the demand structure or with the activity leading to such demand, parking space supply is made obligatory. The other approach is a market-based one. A parking space supply is created by the liberal market conditions within specific rules. The third approach to parking policies is the parking (demand) management. It involves and relies on existing parking areas to answer the demand, with transport land use and efficiency policies. Up to date data are crucial in designating parking policies. Policies formulated to integrate different targets and establish a balance between supply and demand should be developed. In any such case, data sets that are strikingly different from one another will be needed. The following steps will be needed for strategic research and data collection: • To define existing problems and the reason why, • To evaluate effects of any potential solutions and prescriptions, • To measure projections and process for the target and the objectives. Provided parking policies are designated to the need and implemented efficiently; • Traffic flow will not be interrupted; if on-the-road parking arrangements are not in place, traffic flow may be interrupted because of irregular parking behaviour. Therefore, the traffic flow will be safeguarded if and once regular and proper parking behaviour is developed. It will also enable an overall convenience, as traffic resulting from seeking an available parking spot will be minimised. • It will secure the justice regarding parking spaces. As there is no good balance between the user groups, the current system might be functioning in favour of the advantaged groups. Once parking policies are set, a fair parking space distribution will be possible between the community dwellers, business operations, customers and visitors. • Viability level of the district will be improved; lack of a parking order results in cars entering in pedestrian's living spaces. Determining the area and space allocated to vehicles will pave the ground for emerging sidewalk areas, recreation areas, and bicycle tracks. It will also contribute to safety on road. • Integration of disadvantaged groups in social life will be easier; disabled citizens' urban access is hindered by poor parking order. Special spots allocated to disadvantaged groups, and access corridors will enable local mobility. • It will make contributions to economics; access to and transportation to the district cannot be realised properly because of the imbalanced parking space supply and demand. Once parking policies are set, access to urban services will be improved and needs and requirements of the drive-through facilities will be satisfied. • Cities will acquire aesthetically better appearance; lack of parking policies allows irregular parking behaviours, which, in turn, paves the ground for disorder. Parking areas categorised by vehicle grade with an established parking order will contribute to urban aesthetics. • It will help to improve social and environmental quality; limited accessibility means that demand for transportation is not on desired level, which directly affects social life. If supply is in balance, local mobility will be improved, which will be transformed in the form of an added value to social life. Redundant drive-through will be reduced; consequently air and noise pollution will be less. In the light of the foregoing, efforts have been made for examining how parking policies are established in literature, how they are set successfully with examples, and the situation is further examined in the application area in thesis study titled "Analysing Parking Behaviours and Suggesting Parking Policies for the Application Area". Proven examples with a success rate have been selected as case studies from Los Angeles, Barcelona, London, and San Francisco, which are qualified as a big cities as Istanbul is. Exemplary reports examined for the purpose have been compared and contrasted and consequently supported with literature. The study has particularly focused on how the data should be collected and how collected data should be evaluated. Once in-depth data have been acquired, district of Fatih has been selected as the study area as the district has been observed suffering from problems due to on-the-road parking space supply. Access data, charging data for paid parking areas on the road, as well as area use data have been collected in order to study parking behaviours in the study area. Thus collected data have been analysed through Geographical Information Systems and other computational methods. Analyses have been made under the titles of transportation, land use, parking behaviours. Under the title of transportation, the existing transportation infrastructure and current condition and state of parking spaces have been examined for type capacity. Space use has been calculated for overall parcel based on the ground floor and above ground floor use on building sites. Also, business sectors that provide services on the parcels have been categorised under the title of the space use. Parking space capacity, parking time and distribution, number of parking, and parking cycle, occupancy rate, car type distribution and local community have been considered and evaluated under the title of parking behaviours. Detailed visualisation has been provided for better understanding analysis results. In the light of the analysis provided here, "parking policies" are offered for maximum benefit to the study area, efficient functioning of any existing on-the-road parking spaces and added value to economic growth, environmental sustainability and social equality objectives. Even though it might not eliminate the parking space issue thoroughly in the application area, it is concluded that park demand will be in a good balance with the existing supply parameters thanks to efficient strategies, and the demand will be managed accordingly.