How Much Urban Traffic is Searching for Parking?

In this paper we explore city-level traffic and parking data to determine how much cruising for curbside parking contributes to overall traffic congestion. To this end, we describe a new kind of queueing network and present a data-informed model based on this new queuing network. We leverage the data-informed model in developing and validating a simulation tool. In addition, we utilize curbside parking and arterial traffic volume data to produce an estimate of the proportion of traffic searching for parking along high occupancy arterials. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that while percentage increase in travel time to through traffic vehicles depends on time of day, it does not appear to depend on high volumes of through traffic. Moreover, we show that the probability of a block-face being full is a much more viable metric for directly controlling congestion than average occupancy rate, typically used by municipalities.