Assessment of Factors Influencing Public Parking Development in Tehran

Tehran citizens suffer from hardly found public parking spots on their daily intra-city trips. Official statistics published by the Tehran Municipality affirms the high gap between the public parking supply and the demand all over the city. This gap is a result of decades of shortfalls in developing public parking in the city. The contributing factors which have prevented the authorities from solving the issue during past years have not been investigated yet. To address this problem, this research investigated the Tehran’s parking development issue from different aspects. An assessment was carried out according to the thorough literature review and field survey of four major stakeholders, including car owners, public parking investors, public parking operators, and the city authorities. The questionnaire-based survey conducted among car drivers in the city showed the majority of them spend more than 10 minutes finding free parking spots. The wasted time creates high stress among car drivers. The majority of car drivers were interested in the parking areas close to their destinations. Consequently, on-street parking spots were more favorable than the off-site parking areas. In the conducted interviews low profitability of the parking investment, not taking the issue seriously by the authorities, high costs of parking construction permits, poorly regulated car park rates and high parking operation costs were identified as the main influential factors to the parking problem. Giving a high priority to this issue by the city authorities, proactivity regulating the car park rates in different parts of the city, creating new parking investment incentives such as tax exemptions and granting commercial permits, and implementing new regulations encouraging parking owners in using off-street parking were among the recommended solutions. The achieved results of the research can be used as inputs for future decisions in the Tehran Municipality.