UNR Parking Survey

A Course Project for
APEC 464/664 "Valuation of Non-Market Goods"

Results

The following results are based on information collected through the UNR parking survey administered in April 2001. They are entirely descriptive in nature. The aim of this report is to provide interested parties with an overview of commuting and parking behavior, as well as permit choices amongst UNR students, staff and faculty who completed the survey. More rigorous analytical results will be derived throughout the next academic year and published at this site when available.

All Tables are inserted at the end of this document.

The survey was online for 6 ½ days. It was completed by 305 respondents. These responses are distributed over population sub-groups as follows:

Permit holders: 226 (74%)
Non-permit holders: 79 (26%)

Students: 156 (51%)
Staff: 85 (28%)
Faculty: 60 (20%)
Other: 4 (1%)

Female: 212 (69.5%)
Male: 93 (30.5%)



1. Trip and Parking Behavior

Table 1 shows the number of days per "average work week" respondents drive to campus, and their parking choices. The "Mean"-columns display averages over sub-groups. "Valid Obs" refers to the valid number of responses for a given cell.

As can be seen from the Table, average trips to campus are highest for silver and green permit holders (PHs), and are between 4 and 5 days/week for all segments. The number of times permit parking is used for these trips (the first trip on a given day in case of multiple daily trips) increases with permit category. Specifically, blue permit holders show the lowest frequency (about 3 days / week). As the Table shows, they are more likely to substitute to metered and free off-campus parking.
Non-permit holders (NPHs) predominantly resort to free parking (3.1 days / week), with meters playing a secondary role (.63 days / week).

Table 2 captures the average time it takes specific sub-groups to find parking using permits, meters, and free off-campus parking. When permit parking is used, the time to find a spot increases steadily with decreasing permit status. Blue permit holders take, on average, close to 5 minutes to find parking, whereas silver permit holders find a space in approximately 2 minutes. Interestingly, NPHs that park free have a slightly lower search time (4.3 minutes on average) than blue permit users. It should also be noted that NPHs have a significantly lower search time for free parking than PHs (4.3 vs. 6.2 minutes, respectively), probably because of more experience finding a slot off-campus.
The time to find metered parking ranges from 3-4 minutes to over 10 minutes for sub-groups, although some sample sizes are too small to allow inference to the wider campus population.

2. Choice of Permit Lot

As indicated in Table 3, holders of a specific permit type above the blue level generally park at permit-compatible lots. A few green permit holders indicated substitution to purple and blue lost for some of their trips (see second row of Table 3). Similar findings hold for silver permit holders, some of whom use green and purple lots for fractions of their weekly trips. Overall, substitution to blue lots appears relatively insignificant for all higher permit types.

3. Shuttle Transit and Walking Times

Generally, PHs prefer to walk from their parking lot to their final campus destination, as can be seen from Table 4. Only about 12% of PHs take the campus shuttle. Most of these shuttle users (18 out of 24) are blue permit holders. This seems reasonable, given the relatively large distance of blue lots to most campus destinations. The average shuttle transit (including waiting time) takes about 12 minutes. As indicated in the last column of Table 4, shuttle users add about 6 minutes of walking time to their shuttle ride to reach their final campus destination. This compares to roughly 8 minutes of walking time for blue PHs that do not use shuttle service.

Across all PHs who do not use the shuttle, walking time amounts to less than 5 minutes. Naturally, this lower overall average compared to walking time for blue PHs reflects the relatively short walking time for higher level permits (3 -5 minutes), who generally park close to their final destination.

The picture is very similar for NPHs. An average shuttle wait / ride of about 11 minutes is followed by a 7-minute walk, although the sample size for this segment is very small (3 observations). Like PHs, the majority of NPHs prefer to walk straight from their parking space to their final destination. Walking time for NPHs is about 6 minutes, leading to an overall average walking time of 5 minutes for all respondents who do not use shuttle service.

Perhaps the most striking result captured in Table 4 is the fact that NPHs spend considerably less time walking from their parking space to campus than blue PHs. In fact, only green and silver PHs experience clearly shorter walking times than NPHs.

4. Trip and Parking Behavior / Permit Status by UNR Affiliation

As shown in Table 5, the share of student respondents holding a permit is roughly 71% (111 out of 156), compared to 76% for staff and 78% for faculty. Staff have the highest average for number of days they drive to campus during a work week (4.9 days). Student PHs are more likely to substitute into metered and free parking than the other two groups: They use their permit only on 3.5 days during an average work week, compared to close to 5 days for staff and faculty.

All three groups have a non-trivial share of NPHs, most of which use free parking (see last 2 columns of Table 5).

Table 6 shows the distribution across permit types by UNR affiliation. About 20 to 25% of each respondent group are NPHs. The blue permit type is predominant amongst student PHs (27%), followed by green (21%) and purple (17%). In contrast, staff and faculty clearly prefer green and silver permits to all other types.

5. Trip and Parking Behavior / Permit Status by Gender

An immediately striking result captured by Table 7 is that a significantly larger share of female respondents own a permit than is the case for the group of male survey takers (78% vs. 65%). Other than that, results for driving to campus and parking behavior are quite comparable for the two segments.

As shown in Table 8, female PHs prefer green and silver permits over blue and purple types. For male PHs, the ranking is green, blue and silver. Again, the biggest difference between the two gender groups lies in the share of NPHs vs. PHs as mentioned above.

6. Pricing Scenarios

Respondents were asked which permit, if any, they would purchase under a variety of pricing scenarios. These scenarios were different for PHs and NPHs. Specifically, price bundles "offered" to PHs started at price levels anticipated for Fall 2001, and increased from there across remaining scenarios.

Non-permit holders were offered lower price bundles. Their spectrum of price combinations ended with Fall 2001 values as high point for most permits.

Table 9 captures price scenarios and decisions associated with PHs. The first few columns under the heading "current" show prices as of Fall 2000, which were relevant when current permit holders made their purchase decision. Scenario 1 includes the new price set for Fall 2001. About 4% of all current PHs who will continue to be affiliated with UNR this Fall, would opt not to purchase a permit at this new schedule. There is also some substitution away from the silver permit. Interestingly, the share of blue permits decreases quite substantially (from close to 22% to 12%). Since this decrease is much larger than the "no permit" segment, this may indicate a certain degree of dissatisfaction amongst blue PHs with their permit type, rather than a pure price effect.

With exception of scenario 2, all subsequent (hypothetical) bundles reflect continuous price increases for all permits, with random price ratios across permit types. In scenario 2, the price for a sliver permit actually decreases, triggering a strong substitution effect towards this type primarily at the expense of purple and green permits.

Generally, the share of respondents deciding not to purchase any permit increases steadily with higher priced bundles, as expected. Also, the decline in segments buying a specific permit is more pronounced for higher types across scenarios 2-5.

Table 10 shows the same comparison for NPHs (staying at UNR for at least another year) and different price bundles. In this case, the relevant research question was not "At what price would respondents STILL purchase a given permit type," but "How low would prices have to be for people to ENTER the permit market?".

As in Table 9, price bundles increase in value from scenario 1 to 5, except for silver permits which have a relatively lower price in the last scenario. While at the lowest price scenario approximately 76% of current NHPs could be persuaded to purchase a permit, this share drops to less than 30% in scenario 4 as prices approach current levels. Interestingly, "green" is the permit of choice in all scenarios, even though its price is higher than the current price of "blue". This may indicate that the decision not to purchase ANY permit for the past academic year reflects, to some extent, quality preferences and not just the inability to afford even the cheapest permit type (blue). A similar argument can be made for silver permits, which are relatively low priced in the last scenario (but higher than current blue, purple, and green permits), and attract over 45% of decision votes.

¹Due to a technical glitch, the number of valid observations for scenarios 1,2,3, and 5 is smaller than for “current” and scenario 5. Therefore, the pricing analysis will focus on comparisons based on percentages.



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