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This study aims to analyze and discuss the key design assumptions needed for design of car parks in steel, to highlight the impact that the increased fire loads introduced by modern cars and changes in the fire dynamics have on the design, such as fire spread leading to non-localized fires.

In particular, a reliable fire load density to be used for structural design of car park structures is assessed, based on investigations of the fire loads of modern cars. Based on knowledge of fire load and fire performance of cars, the consequences on the fire safety design of steel structures are presented.

Design recommendation about fire load density and fire protection of common steel profiles are given. Finally, the proposed design is compared with a design practice that has been applied in many instances for car parks constructed with unprotected steel, and recommendations for a reliable design process are provided.

Numerous car park buildings have recently been designed of steel structures without passive or active fire protection. The key assumptions that makes possible such design are local fire scenarios, outdated values of the car fire load and utilization of the ultimate steel strength. This paper identifies the shortcomings of such key assumptions, indicating the need for revisiting the methods and possibly even checking the analyses carried out for some already-built car parks.

Town centre redevelopment provides an opportunity to redesign the topology of the road network. Environmental and safety considerations will usually entail some streets being reserved for pedestrians only and others for access to car parks and service bays close to the pedestrian precinct. The effect of the new topology on traffic flow can and should be an input to the planning process. One way to appraise alternative schemes is to find the extent to which traffic could be routed to reduce the amount of conflict there will be between the different streams of traffic at the junctions; conflict at junctions is a simple measure indicating the potential for both accidents and congestion with its attendant pollution.

The problem of finding an assignment of flow such that conflict is minimised is a constrained optimisation problem. The main constraints are provision of routes for a demand specified by an origin-destination (OD) matrix. The objective function which measures the amount of conflict between the different streams is simple to formulate; it depends only on the topology of the network and the OD matrix of demand. But it is a quadratic function of a type which is not amenable to existing programming methods. However, the author has developed an iterative method for obtaining good, if not necessarily optimal, solutions.

The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate the appraisal of hypothetical networks involving four external zones. The OD matrix has been chosen to model some through as well as mostly inbound traffic flow. Various alternative schemes are appraised ranging from those which merely allow one access point to a car park within a ring of streets surrounding the pedestrian precinct, to those which retain one link across the ring and up to two car parks. This is a pilot study for a larger one involving the systematic analysis of hypothetical town centre topologies. So far it has shown the advantage of two access points over one, and the greater advantage of two separate car parks each with a single access point which allows each car park to be in a separate cell of the road network. The relative positions of the access points and the link across the ring also affect the amount of conflict.

Most multi‐storey car parks do not have air pollution problems. But some do, together with problems of acute traffic congestion within them and difficulties in leaving them. Traffic fumes build up and these car parks get poor reputations with their users. This paper looks at how these problems occur and what operators can do to reduce or remove them.

This study aims investigate the status of applying technology in car parking facilities. It also examines the factors affecting the deployment of these technologies as they improve the efficiency and convenience of car parking facilities amidst changing transport needs in Asian smart cities.

A comprehensive literature review informs the relationships between car park provisions and the traffic congestion problem. A typology covering different technological solutions is then formulated. The factors affecting the use of two such common technologies (i.e. mechanical car parks and intelligent information systems) are examined in two emerging smart cities in Asia with the aid of a desk-top study for Singapore and a survey covering over 600 samples (including users and non-users, as both groups are important to derive influencing factors) in Hong Kong.

The extent to which mechanical car parks may help relieve the space shortage problem depends on their relative costs and the facility management performance. For real-time vacancy information systems, their wide spread use depends on drivers’ age and past parking experience.

Due to geographical constraints, only two Asian cities (Singapore and Hong Kong), where the use of smart technologies is flourishing, are included in the study. The survey on car parking apps is preliminary due to their relative short deployment in Asia. It is expected that the phenomena will quickly spread in the region as more smart cities are developed.

By expounding on the development of modern parking technologies in smart cities, the important influence of car parks as a strategic facility toward solving traffic congestion and environmental problems is brought to the attention of policy makers, in particular the influencing factors affecting strategies to promote the use of parking apps.

The purpose of this study is to measure the supply and demand for parking in London to determine whether there is sufficient provision for night-time residential needs and to determine whether policies designed at controlling car ownership by restricting residential parking are effective.

The history of parking controls and early studies of parking in Central London are reviewed to put into context recent surveys of parking supply undertaken by MVA. Data from the National Travel Survey, the English Housing Survey and various travel demand surveys by Transport for London have been analysed to determine the overnight demand for parking and the supply both off-street and on-street.

The study shows that there appears to be saturation in inner London for controlled on-street parking (which is the majority of available parking) and high utilisation for off-street parking. In outer London, there is more spare capacity. The evidence suggests that restricting residential parking space does not limit the growth in car ownership especially in outer London where the car is an essential part of modern living.

Restrictive policies on parking supply in new developments leads to unsightly and dangerous parking on streets not designed for parking or illegal parking on footways. Policy makers must appreciate that car ownership will continue to rise and that parking spaces must be provided, if necessary, underground.

The study uses several different sources of data to investigate the under-researched area of parking availability which is of considerable importance to transport planners and policy makers.

Discusses the growth of business parks in the UK, their nature and ingredients for success. Points out some advantages, compared with town centre locations. Concludes that the concept is relatively new.

The exponential growth in the number of visitors and the mass-tourism mobility patterns in natural areas are causing serious issues such as traffic congestion, crowding in car parks, pollution, high noise levels, and traffic accidents. In order to redress this situation, demand management policies that propose more sustainable transportation systems are crucial. In this chapter, the authors summarize extensive research carried out in Teide National Park (Canary Islands, Spain), the most visited national park in Spain, one of the most visited in the world, and a clear example of a natural area under pressure from mass tourism. The authors present the current situation of the natural site and three scientific contributions based on a survey combining revealed and stated preferences that analyzes visitor preferences with regard to the use of sustainable transportation systems. The first study analyzes visitors’ preferences regarding the implementation of a public bicycle-sharing system. The second study explores visitors’ willingness to pay to reduce the environmental impact of their visit and the potential implementation of a shuttle-bus service. The third study investigates the recreational economic value of the site. The chapter provides useful information for decision-makers who need to address problems associated with the unsustainable visitor mobility and reports results that can be extrapolated to other natural parks with similar characteristics and high inflow of tourists.

The pricing of parking is a common tool used by governments to facilitate the efficient movement of traffic, raise revenue and, more recently, influence travel behaviour. An important and under-researched by-product of parking pricing schemes is the impact of these schemes on parking supply.

This chapter offers a review of prior research and literature, and explores: who pays the parking levy, the impact of the Congestion Levy on the provision of parking and an overview of the transport impacts of the levy.

The direction of the levy at parking operators and owners rather than the vehicle drivers does not provide a direct link between users and the levy and results in many parking providers not passing the levy onto commuters. The study of parking supply impact shows that, since the introduction of the levy, the supply of commercial off-street parking spaces has declined while the growth in private, non-residential, parking spaces has slowed. Over the same period, there has been a decrease in the number of parking spaces provided for long-stay parking (which attract the parking levy), and an increase in the number of spaces provided for other uses. Understanding these parking supply impacts are important, not only because a reduction in the number of long-stay car parking spaces is an objective of the levy, but also because any such reduction could magnify the travel behaviour impacts that may have occurred solely as a result of an increase in parking price. Investigation of the overall transport impacts of the levy indicate that the parking levy did have an impact on mode choice. However the extent of this impact was not clear due to a large number of associated changes in policy and economic conditions that took place at the same time as the levy.

The chapter shows that the parking levy was positive in its impact on transport use, however there were a number of improvements that could be made to the way the levy was implemented that could improve these. Interestingly, there have been a number of recent changes in the implementation of the levy that address some of these issues. Most importantly, following its own investigation into the impact of the levy, from January 2014 the cost of the levy was increased by 40% to $1,300 per annum, and its coverage extended (Victorian State Revenue Office, 2013). The impact of this change has not been considered in this research.

The uniqueness of the chapter lies in its exploration of how increased prices of parking has influenced supply and how the levy, as a new form of congestion pricing, has influenced the supply of parking in the context of the case study of the Melbourne parking levy in Australia.

This chapter provides a case study of the implementation of the Parking Space Levy (PSL) in Sydney, Australia. Introduced by the Parking Space Levy Act 1992, the scheme places a levy on business use of off-street car parking spaces with the revenues from the levy being hypothecated to public transport improvements. The chapter outlines the implementation of what is now a relatively mature scheme and examines how the revenues raised by the scheme have been spent.

This chapter offers a review of the introduction of the levy in Sydney and explores its impact in implementation with respect to changes to the number of parking spaces and an analysis of the way in which the hypothecated revenue has been spent. The implementation of the PSL is evaluated against the literature on hypothecation of funds and includes a discussion of policy issues for Sydney in the light of the evidence presented.

Whilst off-street parking availability is a major contributor to peak period traffic, the implementation of the PSL as a single rate of application has not led to a decrease in total number of available parking places in the City of Sydney. The number of concessions for unused spaces, whereby the levy was not imposed, increased when the levy rate was doubled in 2009 although this was accompanied by a fall in the number of exemptions from the levy. The revenue from the PSL has been dedicated to improvements in public transport infrastructure, primarily interchanges and commuter car parks although the more recent provisions to spend on ‘soft’ measures to improve sustainable travel have not been taken up.

Whilst a stated objective of the PSL was to reduce congestion, the chapter concludes that the PSL had more than this single objective which makes it more difficult to assess whether its implementation has been a success.

This chapter provides an overview of the introduction, implementation and outcomes of the PSL in Sydney, relating it to the PSL in Melbourne (Chapter 13) and the WPL in Nottingham (Chapter 15). No other study to date evaluated the PSL in Sydney against the literature relating to hypothecation nor tracked the impacts of implementation of the PSL to evaluate its success.

Underground parking projects are expensive. The capital cost of underground parking projects has been, and still is, one of the promoter’s main economic concerns. Therefore, the capital cost estimation is an essential task in the early stages of underground parking projects. In this context, the promoters mainly use cost estimation models, most of them produced by methodologies with lack of precision and with low performances. Over the last years Portugal has embarked on a large programme of underground parking projects in the major cities. The present research work is based on data and knowledge colleted from that programme. This paper presents an analysis of the underground parking projects built and underway in Portugal. It discusses the main variables influencing the capital cost of under‐ground parking projects. Finally, it presents a mathematical model for estimating capital cost of this type of project during the planning phase.