Optimization of airport parking facilities size and location

Airports have been characterized by a dramatic traffic expansion in and out of airport parking areas, because of the constant growth of air transportation and the high percentage of private automobiles. The provision of car parking space and facilities is a key element of airport development and planning, because the convenience and flexibility of the private car implies that it is by far the most used and the easiest method for accessing airports both for passengers and visitors both for employees (Ashford et al., 1997). Consequently, airports should consider large parking capacity into their medium-long term planning. Parking facilities, their main characteristics and location are important aspects of airport business. Indeed, they make up a considerable part of the total revenue at most airports. A survey performed by the Airport Council International (ACI, 1998) revealed that almost 50% of total revenues, during the ‘90s, at North American airports were generated by non-aeronautical sources, including parking. In the UK the revenues from commercial sources represent the 40% (Humphreys, 1999) of airport revenues and the ATRS global report (ATRS 2003 in Oum and Yu, 2004) revealed that the non-aeronautical revenues, for a sample of 16 large European airports are almost the 42% of the total revenues. In particular, some authors (Ashford et al., 1997; Maise, 1997) highlighted that in the largest airport (hub airports) the revenues generated from parking facilities are almost the 20% of the total. In Europe, airports raise around 13% of their income from car parking revenue (source: ACI, in Humphreys and Francis, 2002). The BAA annual report shows that in 2007 the net income from car parking facilities was about 33% of the total net retail income, with a growth rate of 5,5%. To mitigate the serious shortage of parking spaces around central terminal areas, airport operators often build remote parking facilities in peripheral areas provided with rapid connection transit systems (usually shuttle buses). A distant parking facility is advantageous for the airport operator because of the abundant areas with potentially low acquiring cost and because this solution can reduce the congestion near terminals. Nevertheless, travellers are less willing to use parking facilities located far from airport terminals, yielding an insufficient demand and a low utilization of the parking itself. The above process clearly involves a trade-off mechanism between travellers’ demand and operators’ costs. Previous studies analyzed the parking space allocation or the parking location choice focusing on metropolitan areas (e.g. Gur and Beimborn, 1984; Hunt and Teply, 1993; Hess and Polak, 2004). In these studies, linear programming, logit, mixed logit or gravity models were used. Hensher and King (2001) adopted a stated preference survey method to evaluate the role of parking pricing and supply in whether to drive or park in the central business district (CBD). Bonsall and Palmer (2004) reported on models developed from data collected using the parking choice simulator. Previous studies which dealt with the size and location of different types of parking facilities usually adopted a simply approach, and moreover adopted the perspective of operational research and optimization techniques. However, in literature there are few studies aiming at examining how the parking facilities operating costs are affected by travellers’ demand and their impacts on the size and locations of the parking facility, which are important issues for the operator. The remote parking facilities considered in this study are operated by the airport operator, and are connected to the airport terminal by shuttle buses. This study explores how to optimize the size of the parking facilities and the total stalls supplied by considering close demand-supply interaction. Moreover, this study analyzes how the optimal characteristics of parking facilities are affected by the construc...