Research pick: Park and learn - "A simulation-based study to evaluate and improve university parking space"

Parking congestion at universities, particularly engineering colleges, is becoming a growing concern as student populations steadily rise while parking capacity remains the same. In many urban environments, including university campuses, drivers routinely face the frustration of searching for an available parking space, often leading to wasted time and increased stress. A study in the International Journal of Services and Operations Management has looked at how the parking issue might be addressed.

Rabih Monzer Firaoui, Jehad Basem Abu Shamleh, Bilal Marzouki, and Ibrahim Emad Elabed of the University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, Sharfuddin Ahmed Khan of the University of Regina, Canada, and Shahriar Tanvir Alam of the Military Institute of Science and Technology in Dhaka, Bangladesh, focused on a particular university’s engineering college where a significant increase in student enrolment over the past five years has meant its parking capacity has become overwhelmed. There is always congestion, especially during peak hours, and the researchers have turned to simulation techniques to see whether they could find a solution.

The researchers used a discrete-event simulation, which models real-world operations, to uncover the parking patterns at the campus. The approach can easily simulate such a complex system and identify inefficiencies. The team compared their simulation with real-world data and confirmed that it offered a reliable representation of the parking problem at the college. By incorporating real traffic and parking data from the campus, the team discovered that parking levels were typically at 70 percent capacity. However, the demand for parking spaces surged during peak hours, specifically between 08:00 and 09:30 because of the way lectures are scheduled. So even though there may well be enough parking spaces, congestion means that they are not filled efficiently. The obvious solution then is not to create more parking spaces but to adjust the college timetable to allow students, lecturers, and others to use the available spaces in a more efficient manner.

Parking congestion is, of course, a far more widespread issue, and the economic and psychological costs associated with it are enormous. Research indicates that drivers in crowded public parking areas can lose hours each year searching for parking spaces, leading to increased stress and lost productivity. Studies that can find solutions to this problem could feed into intelligent transport systems that incorporate sensors and real-time data analytics to optimize parking and improve traffic flow on campus and off.

Firaoui, R.M., Khan, S.A., Alam, S.T., Shamleh, J.B.A., Marzouki, B. and Elabed, I.E. (2024) ‘A simulation-based study to evaluate and improve university parking space’, Int. J. Services and Operations Management, Vol. 49, No. 3, pp.265–288.