Estimating Total Demand and Benchmarking Base Price for Student Parking on University Campuses

Abstract

Most universities limit the number of student parking permits and use their prices to moderate the parking demand. Two critical inputs for implementing such a practice are: (1) the total demand (number of students who will purchase parking permits in a 12-month academic year); and (2) the single, campus-wide base price of student parking permits, benchmarked against other universities. Parking, demographic, and economic statistics were gathered from 208 universities across the United States to calibrate and validate a Beta regression total demand model and a Tobit regression base price model. Three case studies are then presented to illustrate the applications of the models. The first case study compared the models’ solutions against parking management practices at four random selected university campuses; whereas the second case study applied the models to a university to forecast the total demand and the base price in the future. In the third case study, the Monte Carlo simulation technique was adopted to handle uncertainties in the independent variables in the forecasts.