Evaluation of spatial heterogeneity in the sensitivity of on-street parking occupancy to price change

Adjustment of parking price has long been considered an effective way to control parking demand and demand has often been shown to be affected by spatial factors. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the spatial heterogeneity in the sensitivity of parking occupancy to price change using data obtained in downtown San Francisco between 2011 and 2014. The performance-based pricing implemented in the study area allows parking rate to increase, decrease or remain unchanged in neighborhoods with parking occupancy levels higher than, lower than, or within a desired range. As such, the relationship between change in occupancy and change in parking rate is explored. The geographically weighted regression (GWR) method was used to capture the spatial heterogeneity in sensitivity in different blocks and modeling results showed that there is a significant negative correlation between occupancy change and parking rate change. Thus, sensitivity of on-street parking occupancy to price change has an obvious trend of spatial variation. By capturing the spatial heterogeneity in the dataset, the GWR model achieved higher prediction accuracy than a global model. Variables including time of day, block-level features, and socio-demographic characteristics were also found to be correlated with occupancy change. Based on the GWR outputs, a generalized linear model was estimated to further identify how various factors affect sensitivity in different block areas. Findings of this study can be used to help parking authorities with tasks such as identifying which blocks are suitable for balancing parking demand and supply by adjusting price and designing optimal parking rate schemes to achieve desired on-street parking occupancy levels.