Do parking requirements significantly increase the area dedicated to parking? A test of the effect of parking requirements values in Los Angeles County

Minimum parking requirements (MPRs) are the norm for urban and suburban development in the United States (Davidson et al., 2002). The justification for MPRs is that overflow parking will occupy nearby street or off-street parking. Shoup (1999a) and Willson (1995) provide cases where there is reason to believe that parking space requirements have forced parcel developers to place more parking than they would in the absence of parking requirements. However, to our knowledge the existing literature does not test the effect of parking minimums on the amount of lot space devoted to parking beyond a few case studies. This paper tests the hypothesis that MPRs bind for most land uses using data on suburban office, commercial, industrial and retail property sales from Los Angeles County using both direct and indirect approaches. Our indirect test of the effects of parking requirements is similar to the one used by Glaeser and Gyourko (2003). A simple theoretical model shows that the marginal value of additional parking to the sale price of a building should be equal to the cost of land plus the cost of parking construction. We estimate the marginal values of parking and lot area with spatial methods using a large data set from the Los Angeles area non-residential property sales and find that for most of the property types the marginal value of parking is significantly below that of the parcel area. In addition, we directly examine required and supplied parking and find that on average parking supplied is quite close to the required amount.     

Sharing costs in Swedish road ownership associations

Usually transport systems, and roads in particular, are viewed as public goods. However, this is not always the case. In Sweden a large part of the road system is privately owned. Most of these privately owned roads are rural roads used by farmers and summer cottage owners, or used for forest transport. These roads are mainly provided by ownership associations.An important difference between public roads and these privately owned roads is that all investments- and maintenance decisions are made by the users themselves, who also have to pay the costs, whereas the usual case is that the owners/providers of a road-system are different agents than the users. Here the question is not how to charge the roads but how to split the costs of the roads among the users in an efficient and “fair” way.The motivation of this paper is the practical problem of how such an ownership association can divide the costs for the road network among the members in an efficient and “fair” way. The problem is treated from a game theoretical point of view, making use of the Shapley value. This means that the problem is associated with a game - a mathematical representation of the conflict situation. The Shapley value is a very important solution concept for cooperative games, like the game in this case. For games corresponding to this specific type of problems, it is shown that the Shapley value has excellent properties, such as beeing an element of the core, and beeing very easy to compute.     

Bridging the Gap in Planning Indoor Pedestrian Facilities

Abstract

Pedestrians are currently attracting the interest of various researchers and practitioners, particularly urban and transport planners. Analysis of the pedestrian behavior, environment and modeling has been carried out in diverse instances in the context of pedestrian planning. This paper seeks to identify the content of each of these three research areas and designate the linkages that connect their interests providing insights into planning indoor pedestrian facilities. To achieve this objective, a review of the literature on pedestrians walking indoors and indoor pedestrian environments was conducted. Understanding pedestrian behavior is fundamental in the pedestrian planning process. Principles of decision-making, cognition, wayfinding and flows were studied. When analyzing the pedestrian environment, Space Syntax and wayfinding analysis were found to be established methods that are an integral part of this field. Finally, the majority of the existing modeling approaches were identified. It was found that despite the dynamic evolution of each area, the integration of different research perspectives is weak. The paper concluded with the proposal of a mindmap which brings together all the concepts found in the literature and which should be explored for a more comprehensive planning of indoor pedestrian facilities.     

Changing roles and new perspectives: towards market orientation in public transport

The general international trend of increasingly subjecting the public transport industry to market principles has been concretized via various developments in many countries. In line with this trend, there is an increased interest in public procurement processes as a model for public service delivery. Sweden is one of the leading countries where public procurement is the prevailing model for delivering public services. In accordance with the general trend, efforts have been made to make Sweden’s public transport more sensitive to passenger needs, and to stimulate a competitive public transport system. For instance, a new Act, which came into effect on 1 January 2012, is aimed at fostering a customer-centric public transport system, with increased role clarity for the public transport actors. Since market-oriented strategies and public procurement processes are both receiving increased interest from the public transport industry, the market orientation of both public authorities and service providers in Sweden’s public transport has been studied. Since market orientation is a process of change, a longitudinal approach was whereby the first study was conducted in the spring of 2011 and the second in the spring of 2014. All of Sweden’s public transport authorities and the service providers that they stated as their major contract holders were asked to participate. In total, 184 respondents participated in the studies. The findings show that the industry as a whole has increased its organizational and inter-organizational efforts to both acquire knowledge of and respond to passenger needs. In particular, the public service providers have increased their involvement in market-oriented activities.     

Market Orientation in Public Transport Research—A Review

It is commonly argued that, in order to meet increasing competition, public transport organizations and systems need to be market oriented. Even though the notion of market orientationhas not been explicitly addressed in public transport research, studies relevant to market orientation have been conducted. The aim of this paper is to introduce the concept of market orientation into the field of public transport, to review previous research into market orientation in public transport research, and to suggest directions for future research. Market orientation is defined as the generation and dissemination of market intelligence by organizations, as well as responses to it. The review suggests that previous academic research has focused on intelligence generation by developing and using models for measuring travel behaviour, stated preferences, perceived customer quality, and satisfaction. Studies of responsiveness have mainly addressed the physical improvements made in public transport organizations, which is also the primary concern of the industry research accounted for. There has been less research into the dissemination of market intelligence, the drivers of market orientation, the relations between the elements, and the overall concept of market orientation in public transport. It is thus concluded that future public transport research needs to address these issues.