Development of a shared parking model for mixed use developments in the South African development landscape

Abstract

Worldwide, parking provision is required at minimum rates typically prescribed by municipal ordinances or in national policy documents. Litman (2011) argues that inherent problems with minimum parking requirements, their predictive variables, demand ratio estimation processes and the application of dated parking standards within an ever-changing development landscape typically results in the oversupply of parking. In the South African context, minimum parking rates are specified in the South African Parking Standards – 2nd Edition (Van Zyl et al., 1985). The development landscape throughout the world and in South Africa has changed dramatically over the past decades, and research of Hitge and Roodt (2006) concluded that “current South African parking standards do not support current land use and transport policies [and that] policy of providing parking at a minimum rate [has limited application] and should be revised”. One specific trend has been an increase in mixed-use developments, which raises the potential for sharing parking between land uses with different peaking characteristics. However more information is needed on both the demand and supply characteristics of parking in this context, if more rational planning is to result. The aim of this research is to investigate the development of a new method of shared parking demand estimation, by assimilating best practice shared parking model components from international literature, and to test the shared parking model by systematically adjusting conventional parking parameters according to shared parking principles to parking demand for high-density, mixed use developments within a South African context case study.