Kerbside Parking
Background
The kerbside of today is a highly regulated environment required to deal with a huge diversity of uses and quite dynamic patterns of use. Whilst most people observe most of the regulations most of the time, it is evident that the pressures on kerb access mean that infractions of the rules are common place. Whilst in the future, rather than entering an era where demand for kerb space will fall, we are in a period where it is rapidly growing through processes of intensification and diversification. These both need to be understood and incorporated into any future street management strategy. In the absence of a change in approach to managing the kerb, conditions will worsen.
Competition for kerb space
- There is inadequate provision given to the diversity of uses in the street (i.e. the supply of space for different uses bears no obvious relation to demand)
- There is widespread violation of the (often poorly-explained) traffic regulations to the detriment of a wide range of users
- Current controls on kerb-space allocation are inherently inefficient, with it not being possible to designate any given stretch of kerbside for more than one use in any given time period.
How is Street Use Changing
Intensification: In many places we conclude that there is increased demand for kerb access. Of particular concern is the concentration of such activities at particular times of the day in already busy places where there is not enough space for the kerbside activities of today. There is a necessity to develop strategies for the kerbside which are better able to manage these demands relative to the space which is deemed to be available for such uses.
Diversification: A second important element in the changing nature of street use is the diversification of users and uses. This is particularly challenging because the way the kerbside is regulated today means that each piece of kerbspace can only be earmarked for one specific use at any point in time. Whilst it is possible to vary this across the day, this requires more active management of uses and can contribute to the difficulties of legibility of the kerb.
Simulation of Kerbside parking
The network modelled is the corridor along Roundhay Road and Easterly Road in the NW of Leeds. It is one of the Connected Leeds Corridors, with plans to change a current 2+ lane in the north of the Roundhay Road/Easterly Road to an extended bus lane. The corridor is well served with a total of 18 bus routes running at frequencies ranging from one every 10 minutes to one per hour. Most parts of the corridor operate as two lanes in each direction, with a speed limit of 40mph in the outer region and reduced to 30mph towards the city centre.
The Roundhay Road corridor.
We examine the impact of a growth in PHV and growth in bus patronage on network performance. Throughout, the total demand (of 7,200 person-trips) is assumed fixed, so is the taxi mode share fixed at 5% (or 360 taxis in total in the network). Therefore, any change in the tested mode share in PHV or bus patronage would result in a different level of car traffic simulated.
The traffic share of different transport modes in different scenarios.
In addition, we have tested the effect of faster boarding on network performances, with the average boarding time reduced from 4 seconds to 2 seconds per passenger. This assumption is based on boarding time experiments run by First Bus in Bristol.
Video of Dracula model.
Results of study
- Increasing the bus mode share at the expense of private car traffic provides quite substantial network benefits to all users. By contrast, increasing PHV mode share reduces overall network speed
- The individual user still sees a journey time benefit in taking PHV over the bus and so the conflict between the collective user benefit of the bus and individual user benefits remains
- The impacts of halving the boarding times for buses through contactless and mobile ticketing and other off bus payment solutions