The impact of the parking price on the socio-economic equality of users

Abstract

In addition to the economic and ecological ones, considering the social impacts in making transport decisions has a significant role in achieving the balance of a sustainable transport system. Sustainable transport usually means limiting the use of passenger cars and encouraging the application of mobility management measures, such as parking charges. By supporting the implementation of the goals of sustainable transport, charging for parking contributes to a greater share of more sustainable modes of transport and to the reduction of traffic congestion and its negative consequences such as illegal parking, increased time losses, environmental pollution, etc. However, although recognized as an effective measure, parking charging often faces criticism in terms of inequality towards different social and economic groups of users, which is still not sufficiently researched. Bearing in mind the above, this paper aims to use a binary logit model to examine the sensitivity of users of different socio-economic characteristics to defined parking prices, from the aspect of changing transport behavior. Transportation behavior includes user decision-making when imposing different parking tariff policies, such as parking on the street front, in the parking lot/garage, on the edge of the zone, then changing the mode of transportation, destination, or abandoning the trip. For the development of the model, data was obtained (online) by surveying the residents of Belgrade using the method of revealed and stated preferences. Determining the most influential socio-economic characteristics of users can help decision-makers see the social equality of users when creating a parking tariff policy.