Transit-Based Smart Parking: An Evaluation of the San Francisco Bay Area Field Test

This paper presents an evaluation of the first transit-based smart parking project in the US at the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District station in Oakland, California. The paper begins with a review of the smart parking literature; next the smart parking field test is described including its capital, operational, and maintenance costs; and finally the results of the participant survey analysis are presented. Some key user response results are: (1) most participants used the smart parking system 1–3 days a month for commute travel and (2) 37% of respondents had seen the changeable message signs with parking information, but only 32% of those used this information to decide whether to continue driving or take BART. Some key changes in participant travel behavior include: (1) increases in BART mode share, (2) reductions in drive alone modal share, (3) decreased average commute time, and (4) an overall reduction in total vehicle miles of travel.