An agent-based cellular automaton cruising-for-parking simulation

Abstract

This paper reports on the development of an agent-based cruising-for-parking simulation using the cellular automaton (CA) approach. The software was tested on a small-scale scenario, and a first verification step was performed for a real-world scenario for the town center of Zürich. Approaches to integrating the simulation into MATSim, a multi-agent transport simulation program, are discussed. The software is open source and can be downloaded from a free software repository. Empirical data that may be valuable for future model calibration are currently being surveyed in a global positioning system (GPS) study at the authors’ institute.

Keywords:

• Parking search microsimulation
• Cellular automaton

Notes

1 Some papers that investigate parking in conjunction with other travel choices (such as destination choice) are van der Waerden et al.(2006, 2009), Marsden(2006), Widmer and Vrtic(2004), Anderson and de Palma(2004), Golias et al.(2002), Hensher and King(2001), Gerrard et al.(2001), Baier et al. (2000), Albrecht et al.(1998), van der Waerden et al.(1998), Axhausen et al.(1994), van der Waerden et al.(1993), Glazer and Niskanen(1992), Topp(1991), Polak and Axhausen(1990), Arnott et al. (1991), Feeney(1989), Miller and Everett(1982), Gillen(1978, 1977), and Bonsall and Palmer(2004).

2 Here the median was used instead of the average in order to account for outliers such as persons who had not yet found a parking space by the end of the simulation.

3 One possible operationalization of search time, to be more precise. Remember that the actual search time is latent.

This paper is part of a special issue on Agent-based Microsimulation Techniques