The preferences of travelers determines the utility of daily activity plans. Decision-makers can affect the preference of travelers when they force private car users to use park-and-ride (P&R) facilities as a way of decreasing traffic in city centers. The P&R system has been shown to be effective in reducing uninterrupted increases in traffic congestion, especially in city centers. Therefore, the impacts of P&R on travel behavior and the daily activity plans of both worker and shopper travelers were studied in this paper. Moreover, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are a promising technology for the coming decade. A simulation of the AV as part of a multimodal system, when the P&R system was integrated in the daily activity plans, was carried out to determine the required AV fleet size needed to fulfill a certain demand and to study the impacts of AVs on the behavior of travelers (trip time and distance). Specifically, a group of travelers, who use private cars as their transport mode, was studied, and certain modifications to their daily activity plans, including P&R facilities and changing their transport mode, were introduced. Using the MATSim open-source tool, four scenarios were simulated based on the mentioned modifications. The four scenarios included (1) a simulation of the existing transport modes of the travelers, (2) a simulation of their daily activity plans when their transport modes were changed to AVs, (3) a simulation of the travelers, when P&R facilities were included in their activity chain plans, and (4) a simulation of their daily activity plans, when both P&R and AVs were included in their activity chain plans. The result showed that using the P&R system increased overall travel time, compared with using a private car. The results also demonstrated that using AVs as a replacement for conventional cars reduced travel time. In conclusion, the impact of P&R and AVs on the travel behavior of certain travelers was evaluated in this paper.

A park and ride (P&R) system is a set of facilities where private vehicle users can transfer to public transport to complete their journey. The main advantage of the system is reducing the congestions problem in the central business district (CBD). Thus, the notion of symmetry is particularly important in multi-criteria decision aid (MCDA) because they are basic characteristics of the binary relationships used in modelling the preferences of decision-makers. The focal point of this study is evaluating the P&R facility system location problem from the experts’ point of view. For this aim, an integrated multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) methodology is proposed to evaluate the location of the facilities of the P&R system. The questionnaire survey was designed and estimated by 10 transport experts in the related field. The famous analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was adopted in a fuzzy environment, where the fuzzy sets have an efficient ability to manage the vague concepts in a specific way; moreover, it can mitigate the evaluator reasoning during decision-making. The hierarchical structure of the problem was established to evaluate a real-life problem in Cuenca city, Ecuador. The outcomes highlighted the “accessibility of public transport” as the most significant issue in the P&R facility location problem. The obtained results provide more flexible facilities than the pure AHP method.

The Park and Ride (P&R) system is a set of facilities available to private vehicle users to transfer to public transportation in order to complete their journey. The location of the facilities is determined by the purpose for which they have been created, for example, to reduce traffic in the central business district (CBD), reduce pollution, or increase the use of public transportation. Thus, a set of six main criteria and 19 sub-criteria are considered that are particularly important for decision-makers about the location of P&R facilities in a city. In order to identify which criteria are relevant, a method belonging to the multiple criteria decision is needed. The central point of this study is to evaluate the problem of the location of the facilities of the P&R system according to the point of view of the experts. For this aim, the Best Worst Method (BWM) is adopted to estimate the location of the facilities of the P&R system. The questionnaire survey has been designed estimated by ten transport experts in the related field. The recently created BWM was conducted. The results highlighted that “accessibility of public transportation” is the most important aspect of the problem of the location of P&R facilities. The results obtained provide greater accuracy in the location of facilities problem than the pure analytic hierarchy process method (AHP).

The Park and Ride (P&R) System is part of a set of parking policies provided by Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) that have been used in developing efficient, safe and environmentally friendly solutions to reduce the undesirable effects of private vehicles in Central Business District (CBD). In fact, the P&Rs are allocated near public transportation stations to ease transfer from a private vehicle to a public transportation mode. Therefore, the P&R system is considered as an alternative transport mode in which the location and potential demand of each facility are fundamental components to be evaluated within sustainable urban planning. The paper proposes an integrated model of P&R facilities based on estimate the potential demand through a mathematical model of the seven park-and-ride (P&R) facilities (designated A to G) in Cuenca city, Ecuador. The developed integrated model includes two cost functions: one is the P&R mode, and the second is the private car mode. Additionally, a SUMP is integrated into the model as a data collection source in order to find the required parameters for the cost functions and origin–destination (O-D) matrix of private vehicles. The results showed that three out of the seven P&R facilities (P&R C, P&R G, and P&R A) had the highest demand (70% of the overall demand). Consequently, these three P&R facilities were studied separately using the same developed model, and the demand proved to be the highest for P&R facility “C” (39% out of 70%). In conclusion, SUMPs, as a methodology for data collection and a mathematical model, proved to be an effective integrated method for evaluating the most attractive P&R location based on the potential demand.

Providing a sustainable public transport service for areas with several small villages or hamlets is a challenge for the whole of Europe. To serve ‘dead-end villages’, vehicles must make a to-and-fro detour to each village, which requires considerable performance from the operator, and the service must also be ordered from the responsible bodies. The number of inhabitants in rural areas is constantly decreasing, and the remaining residents are aging. This process is due to the fact that economically active people in the country tend to move into towns offering jobs and public institutions instead of commuting to work. The performance requirement of serving low transport demand areas like ‘dead-end villages’ is high, while the number of passengers is very low. Furthermore, passengers are economically less active, and thus their transport must largely be subsidized. The present study hypothesizes that replacing traditional public transport with demand responsive transport (DRT) can make the service of rural areas with less public transport service and low demand sustainable. To prove this hypothesis, a generally applicable, innovative method of analysis based on performance–allocation is introduced, and the application of this method is illustrated by a case study conducted in northeastern Hungary. The number of ‘dead-end villages’ is high in the surveyed area; consequently, the results are impressive. The mathematical model applied here uses several parameters (e.g., population, traffic surveys, trip distance, operational costs), thus the analysis is highly complex.

A Park and Ride (P & R) system is a set of facilities located throughout an urban area that can serve as transfer points for travelers that would like to utilize their private vehicles for one part of their journey and a more sustainable transport mode, such as public transport, for another part of the same journey. The catchment area of the facilities is identified as a fundamental element for planning a P & R system. It can be assumed to be accurately represented by several geometric shapes, such as a circle or a parabola. In that regard, a method denominated as the parabola method can be used to visualize those geometric shapes on digital maps of an urban environment. It can be implemented as a software program that integrates the variables that represent the elements of the P & R system as well as the set of equations that are used in a geographic information system (GIS) software. A significant aspect of how the parabola method is applied is its orientation as a shape, which is traditionally configured in respect to the area of major business activity or central business districts (CBDs). In fact, the research presented in this article aims to provide a new approach to the parabola’s orientation to study the P & R system’s catchment area by proposing the parabola’s orientation according to the primary access that potential users used to reach the facility. A case study that portrays the application of our method is given that is focused on the medium-sized city of Cuenca, Ecuador, where we determine which approach to the parabola’s orientation is the most suitable. In conclusion, the second approach proposed in this research reflects in a more realistic form the operation of the catchment area of the P & R system, considering a better distribution of the coverage area of the P & R system in the urban environment.