Identifying key determinants for parking management to reduce road traffic congestion for congested cities – A Structural Equation Modelling approach

Road traffic congestion is a major concern worldwide, particularly in old cities with narrow roads and mixed land-use. Increased parking demand is one of the major reasons for this problem. As increasing infrastructure may not be feasible, managing available parking spaces efficiently and designing measures discouraging personal vehicle use may reduce this problem. This work aims to assess the actual parking demand-supply gap in a typical congested city of Patna, India and determine the factors important for reducing this gap. To identify the factors, an exhaustive list of variables were identified from literature and a structured questionnaire was developed. Perception survey was conducted in 5-point Likert scale with 203 respondents from Patna using the questionnaire. It contained five variables related to awareness, four related to ascription of responsibility, six related to social norm for self-driving, eleven related to parking management and enforcement strategies and eight related to parking pricing effectiveness. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted with 120 responses for the five sets of measured variables to identify the underlying factors. Four behavior measurement factors namely awareness, responsibility, self-control and social-influence and five management and enforcement factors namely infrastructure, differential pricing, penalty, general effect and personal effect were identified from EFA. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted with remaining 83 responses using Structural Equation Modeling. It could be observed from regression weights and covariance between identified factors, obtained from CFA, that higher awareness about congestion problems lead to greater willingness of people to accept responsibility and proactively act to reduce congestion. Thus, awareness programs will have positive effects in reducing congestion. However, such programs are not likely to improve acceptability of increased parking pricing. People’s willingness to pay will increase with improved parking facilities in congested places. The proposed survey may be used as a standard questionnaire for survey in other places.