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Many cities across Europe are becoming more and more congested with cars, which degrades the quality of the urban environment and takes its toll on people’s health and wellbeing. Aalborg wants to decrease the number of cars in certain areas through a revised parking system.
Through this measure the City of Aalborg has extended and improved the real-time Parking Information System on the parking network in the city centre. A Parking Information System designed to reduce unnecessary circulation by giving more targeted and more comprehensive information to parking searching drivers. The main objectives of the measure are to:
The current parking guidance system dates from the mid-1990s. It needs a thorough review, especially bearing in mind the re-development of the waterfront in the coming years where parking demand is predicted to rise dramatically.
According to the initial Description of Work it was also planned to design and implement a revised parking charge structure, and thereby reduce long-time parking in the city centre. This would free parking spaces for short-term parking and thus reduce the parking-searching traffic. Due to political reasons this part of the measure could not be implemented within the ARCHIMEDES project period.
The old system providing parking information to drivers searching for parking, designed in the 90s, did not include all the new parking areas in the city centre and was technologically outdated. In the CIVITAS project a revision and redesign of the complete system have been done, in collaboration with the owners of private parking areas. The aim has been to avoid unnecessary kilometres driven in search for parking areas in the most congested areas of the city. This is achieved by informing the drivers about free parking spaces in the closest parking areas, avoiding through traffic in the city centre and saving time and fuel consumption.
Hence, a new and up-scaled Parking Information System has been implemented and is currently in operation. The results from the evaluation of the new Parking Information System can be summarised into the following conclusions:
Overall, there has been a positive effect from the implementation of the new and up-scaled Parking Information System in Aalborg. A new and coherent Parking Information System seems to have a positive effect on the parking-searching traffic flow in midsize cities. However, the following lessons learnt might be useful for other road authorities: