Most low-rise residential areas in Seoul City were supplied during 1970s and 80s as lots for single houses through the Land Readjustment Project, but as the dwelling pattern transformed to multiplex and multi-family housing, it called for correspondin...
Most low-rise residential areas in Seoul City were supplied during 1970s and 80s as lots for single houses through the Land Readjustment Project, but as the dwelling pattern transformed to multiplex and multi-family housing, it called for corresponding parking spaces. However, the influx of vehicles and excess supply of parking spaces with no infrastructure expansion caused unnecessary vehicular traffic and illegal parking, consequently leading to a chaotic parking environment in multiplex and multi-family areas. As a result, avenues and open spaces in front of the low-rise residential areas are occupied with vehicles, aggravating living conditions and the pedestrian environment.
To address this issue, the City of Seoul continuously pursued the Parking Supply Policy in multiplex and multi-family areas with poor parking conditions. Since the Yongsan Constituency implemented the Residential Parking Permit Program on a trial basis, the entire Seoul City has adopted this policy along with other projects, such as the Green Parking Project and building public parking lots. As a result of this series of changes, the number of parking lots in the entire Seoul City increased at the rate of 4.92% per year since 2002, and the number of parking lots in residential areas increased as well at the rate of 4.38% per year. Nevertheless, the fact that parking is still causing serious problems in multiplex and multi-family areas indicates that the policies implemented have limitations in meeting parking demands. Therefore, this study aims to find ways to more efficiently utilize parking spaces as an alternative to the existing policies. Since it seems difficult to resolve the parking issues under the existing policies of parking lot expansion, this study seeks to figure out the need for Parking Demand Management that raises the efficiency of parking spaces under the current supply-oriented policies.
To this end, we selected the Yeonnam-dong area in the Mapo Constituency and surveyed the number of houses, parking lots and vehicles. Also, we separated Housing areas from Non-Housing areas to figure out the utility rate of parking spaces during daytime and night. According to this research, we were able to confirm that there were enough parking lots for the number of vehicles and there is no shortage of parking spaces quantitatively. In addition, we observed that the Housing areas have greater parking demands at night than during daytime while the Non-Housing areas experienced greater parking demands during the day. From this point, we identified that the reason for the shortage of parking spaces comes from improper reflection of parking demands and supply, not from the definite insufficiency of parking spaces. Also, the survey confirmed that the current parking system is not fit to reflect the user patterns at all.
From the survey results, we have established a plan for efficient utilization of parking spaces. Through the concept of parking space exchanges between blocks, we showed the feasibility of this plan by seeking ways to organize parking and pursuing the phased action plan to actually exchange parking spaces. We believe, if we set the ‘Parking Sharing Zone’ by expanding parking exchanges currently underway and elicit people to parking in these zones, the elasticity of parking spaces could be greatly enhanced even without the expansion of parking spaces. On the basis of this point, we suggest various parking management methods as an alternative solution. This involves classification between ordinary parking and operational parking by parking pattern and classification between private and public by demand and utilization to make proper responses. Finally, to realize this parking space exchanges, we anticipated a Parking Sharing System that can share real time parking information and manage parking by time with IT technologies.
This study began with the critical viewpoint against the existing policy direction towards quantitative supply in responding to parking demands and management. We sought to point out the limitations of past viewpoints on the parking issues and show the feasibility of efficient utilization of parking spaces by suggesting parking management methods from a new perspective. To this end, this study is significant for surveying the actual parking conditions in the target areas and realizing the parking management methods with the phased action plan.