Scientists Identified the Best Way to Parallel Parking to Maximize Number Of Vehicles in Given Spaces

Looking for a parking space in cities could be challenging, and more people even find it challenging to do parallel parking because the space left by other people's parking efforts are not quite enough. Drawn from these frustrating events, researchers from the University of Sydney decided to answer which is the best way to parallel park a car.

The team numerically modeled the effect of vehicle-alignment strategy, which influenced the efficiency of street parking, on the packing density over the range of block lengths and investigated the effects of four different parking strategies. The results of their experiments quantify the advantage of aligning vehicles at the end of the space and highlight the decrease of efficiency when block length is shorter.

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Scientists Identified the Best Way to Parallel Park A Car to Optimize Parking Vehicles in Cities

Testing Out the Four Strategies of Parallel Parking

Marked spaces help people manage their frustrations with unreliable parking. However, they are not advisable in terms of density because large vehicles need larger spaces to accommodate their size.

According to Science Alert, the team focused on the unmarked parallel parking that is usually found in residential areas and tested the four strategies drivers can follow. These techniques include (a) parking at the far back, (b) parking at either end of the space, (c) parking in the middle of the space, and (d) randomly parking anywhere in the available space.

They tried each of these techniques and simulated what would happen in the common situation wherein demand is greater than the supply. They found that the worst strategy would be parking in the middle space. Despite being useful, parking in the middle of the available space makes it harder to fit more cars in.

On the other hand, they found that parking randomly has slightly better outcomes, and many drivers commonly use this strategy. But the overall best way to parallel park a car into a scarce street parking is parking at either end of the space. Researchers said that this scenario fits the most car into the street.

Moreover, the analysis showed that parking at either end of the space becomes more beneficial if the car owner lives in the street with shorter curbs. The team noted that this technique gives the most optimized parking strategy as it allows almost double the number of cars able to fit on the road.

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Parking Issues May Encourage People to Return to Public Transportation

Car parking is a major problem in cities wherever country it is due to the rapid increase of car ownership and lack of car parking areas. According to a paper presented during the First International Conference Towards a Better Quality of Life in 2017, the imbalance between parking supply and demand can be considered the initial reason for issues of parking a car that is caused by ineffective land use planning and congestion.

Modern technologies have helped in producing a variety of solutions and techniques in addressing parking issues in cities to make the place more livable and efficient.

Moreover, the team said that one way of reducing the demand for parking space is by encouraging people to return to using public transportation through lowering fares, increasing the cost of parking, or building extra car parks next to train stations. However, these solutions are unlikely to happen.

The full findings of the study, titled "Parallel Parking Vehicle Alignment Strategies," are published in the journal Transport Findings.