The Study of the Effects of Street Parking on the Flow of Urban Networks Traffic Using Aimsun Software

Today, most cities face the problem of shortage of parking places for vehicles, particularly in central areas. Therefore, parking management is one of the major components of traffic management. Absence of non-street parking is now leading to increase street parking, reduce width of streets and totally disrupt the traffic system. The purpose of the present paper is to study the effects of street parking on the flow of urban networks traffic and to analyze traffic parameters. The research method of the paper is the assemblage of the flow volume (number of vehicles) during peak traffic hours and entering the data in Aimsun software, and then analyzing the result graphs to obtain flow volume using statistical methods. The Aimsun software is one of the best traffic software calibrated some years ago in Iran. In this paper, two arterial streets were selected. The results of the research illustrate that street parking increases delay time and density, and increasing these two parameters, in turn, increases traffic congestion and wastes lots of energy, fuel and time. If the street has side parking, delay time and density are increased 19 (sec/veh) and 12 (veh/km) respectively, as opposed to the streets without side parking.