Smart Parking Management Field Test: A Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District Parking Demonstration; Final Report

This report presents an evaluation of the first transit-based smart parking project in the U.S. at the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District station in Oakland, California. The report begins with a review of the smart parking literature; next the smart parking field test is described including its capital, operational, and maintenance costs; then the results of the participant survey analysis are presented; and finally lessons learned from the institutional, user, and operational perspective are documented. Some key changes in participant travel behavior include increases in BART mode share, reductions in drive alone modal share, decreased average commute time, and an overall reduction in total vehicle miles of travel. Key lessons learned include that it would have been beneficial to anticipate additional time for project scoping and permitting, and fixed wayfinding signs were beneficial in both directing vehicles from the highway to the smart parking lot and addressing resident concerns about increased traffic. Additionally, the majority of participants continued to use the service when fees were implemented. However, the CMSs were not widely employed in users’ decision-making processes in this application. Finally, the wireless counting system worked well, with the exception of the in-ground sensors, which were prone to miscounts.