Smart Parking Pilot on the Coaster Commuter Rail Line in San Diego, California

Increasingly, public transit authorities are harnessing advances in sensor, payment, and enforcement technologies to operate parking facilities more efficiently. In the short term, these innovations promise to enhance customer parking experiences, increase the effective supply of existing parking with minimal investment, and increase ridership and overall revenue. Over the longer term, these systems could further expand ridership by generating revenue to add parking capacity and improve access. This paper reports on the Smart Parking Pilot Project on the COASTER commuter rail line in San Diego (California, USA), which builds on the transit-based smart parking field test research conducted at the Rockridge San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District station. The paper begins with a literature review of related parking technology, management and pricing strategies, and the optimization of parking resources at transit facilities. Next, the authors describe results of an initial pilot feasibility study. Finally, the phased smart parking implementation plan, carefully tailored to address key transit-related parking problems at the station and corridor levels, is described along with the pilot project's evaluation criteria.