political and debated problems for the new FIZ Future extension is parking. As of current, approximately 50% of BMW’s FIZ employees and external clients commute to work by means of a private car, generating 11,000 work-bound trips per day, all which require some form of parking (Schuh & Co, 2013).
This demand for parking and the resulting spillover problems in the surrounding residential areas are causing conflict between the various stakeholders in and around FIZ – with BMW employees and local residents, as well as delivery services, BMW contractors and visitors coming to no conclusions. In addition to this, issues concerning parking capacity utilisation, parking subsidisation equity, land consumption, and negative transport externalities have also gained traction. Solving these problems and issues poses many challenges with no clear solution available that is able to satisfy the complex range of stakeholders all of opposing interests.
The purpose of this project seminar is to develop a parking management scheme for BMW FIZ, focusing both on existing parking issues as well as potential problems and opportunities generated by the FIZ Future extension. The paper is organized as follows:
Section 2 presents the project goals and indicators, as well as the overall methodology developed to understand and solve parking issues related to FIZ.
Section 3 proceeds with a global problem analysis – first presenting the scope of investigations and the study area; then investigating the stakeholders involved and their respective interests; finally presenting Henn’s proposal for FIZ Future.
Section 4, 5 and 6 go deeper into the problem analysis and respectively expose investigations of the three main parking issues related to FIZ, namely: (1) How to solve parking problems in the residential areas (2) How to ensure efficient use of existing and future FIZ parking facilities and (3) How to integrate parking strategy into broader perspectives.
Section 7 finally combines the outcomes of these investigations into an overall parking management plan for FIZ Future.
2 Methodology
This section presents the methodological approach which was developed to analyse parking issues related to BMW FIZ. It explains how the three study goals and the corresponding set of indicators were defined; and also describes the team work and project follow-up.
2.1 Goals
The basic project documentation and information provided by BMW clearly pointed out two parking problems related to FIZ. The first one relates to on-street parking issues in surrounding residential areas, with residents complaining about BMW employees occupying
3 their parking places (BMW Group & Landeshauptstadt München, 2013). The second corresponds to parking problems occurring inside FIZ with parking facilities meant to be saturated and ‘full’ after 8:30 in the morning (B. Grüber, personal communication, November 26, 2014).
As a result, an important part of investigations needed to focus on these two issues. The two first study goals were set up accordingly: (1) solving parking problems in the surrounding residential areas and (2) ensuring the efficient utilisation of current and future FIZ parking facilities. The two goals are closely related to each other, since avoiding on-street parking in the residential areas and making better use of FIZ parking facilities both contribute to
‘pushing’ FIZ parkers out of the residential neighbourhoods and back into BMW parking facilities.
Furthermore, it quickly became obvious that solving parking issues was not just about managing the parking supply. The demand-side of transport should also be integrated into a broader set of measures, constituting an overall corporate mobility management plan. The fact remains that encouraging people to use alternatives to the private car (lowering demand) while reducing the amount of parking places available (lowering supply) can have a significant impact on parking. FIZ Future provides a great opportunity to change the mobility habits of FIZ employees and to launch new concepts and innovative solutions to solve parking issues.
Therefore, the third goal aims at putting parking management into perspective and discussing alternative demand-based solutions that could be implemented.
These three objectives are schematically represented in Figure 2, showing BMW FIZ on one side and the residential neighbourhood on the other. The parking situation has been consciously exaggerated, as a way to illustrate one of the main problems the team was facing when investigations started. Complaints about parking were abundant however the lack of data and previous studies made it difficult to distinguish between facts and fiction.
Figure 2: Three-step strategy to tackle parking issues around BMW FIZ
4 Are residents invaded by BMW cars? Are FIZ parking facilities completely full? Is there really no way to compromise? Consequently, the main part of the present study consisted of understanding the nature and extent of the parking problems related to BMW FIZ, before starting to think about suitable solutions.
2.2 Indicators
After having set-up the three main study goals, it was necessary to come up with indicators – in order to quantify the parking issues observed and to assess the effectiveness of the solutions proposed. It was decided to keep the number of indicators limited, in order to prevent complications and also to ensure that the corresponding data was accessible. The three goals and their corresponding indicators are shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Goals and indicators
Goal 1 Solve parking problems in residential areas
Indicators
1) Cars illegally parking in the surrounding residential neighbourhoods (#) 2) On-street parking capacity utilisation during week days (%)
3) Residential areas affected by parking issues (km2)
Goal 2 Ensure efficient utilisation of existing and future BMW FIZ parking facilities
Indicators
1) Walking distance to parking facility (m) 2) Employees working within 300m
3) Employees per parking space in a given distance (emp/sp) 4) Parking capacity utilisation (%)
Goal 3 Integrate the FIZ Future parking strategy into a broader parking perspective
Indicators
1) Modal shift from car to other modes (%) 2) Number of parking places reduced (#)
3) Cost savings due to fewer parking spaces built (€)
Concerning parking issues in residential areas, the indicators were developed according to a series of three simple questions: Who is causing the problem? How large is the problem?
Who is affected? First, there needs to be a particular focus on illegal parkers (e.g., parking in front of private garages or where parking is restricted) and their number should remain as low as possible. Second, on-street parking utilisation is an important variable since it involves data that can be easily collected and also reflects the parking pressure on the residential neighbourhood. Third, particular attention should be paid to the extent of the problem, namely which residential areas are affected and if the problem is likely to expand or not.
5 For the second goal, focus was put on FIZ parking facilities with the objective of ensuring their attractiveness. Accessibility was identified as the first important criterion (e.g., a parking space will be attractive if it takes an employee less than 5 minutes to walk from the parking facility to his/her office). The repartition of the facilities was also highlighted as relevant (e.g., parking facilities should be located at strategic points and fit to the parking demand, namely where employees work). A last important indicator is the parking capacity utilisation, which enables to directly measure parking demand and to highlight possible saturation issues.
The last goal aims to investigate innovative parking management solutions for BMW FIZ. This should motivate employees to use alternative transport modes (demand side) but to also give BMW the possibility to build fewer parking spaces (supply side). In this regard, a modal shift from car to other modes is a good way to see the impacts of demand side strategies, while allowing the latter two indicators (space and cost savings) to effectively fund these strategies.
2.3 Project follow-up
The methodological approach consisted of three main steps, shown in Table 2. It first started with a global problem analysis, which aimed at gaining as much information as possible about BMW FIZ and related parking issues. This rather qualitative approach mostly relied on a literature review and on-site visits. It enabled the development of an in-depth stakeholder analysis – summing-up all important players involved and their respective points of view in relation to parking. In addition, the current BMW FIZ as well as FIZ Future proposal were investigated, in terms of corporate mobility and transport/parking infrastructure. A literature review was also undertaken in order to gain insights into parking management best practices.
At the end of this step, parking issues were highlighted and then some recommendations proposed (see mid-term paper).
Nevertheless, facing a lack of previous studies and relevant parking data, the team needed to proceed with its own research and data collection to continue the analysis. Therefore, the second step of the project was put in place. For this part, the team was divided into smaller working groups, each group being responsible for investigating one of the three study goals.
For the two first goals, particular attention was paid to the methodology: (1) how to analyse parking issues? (2) which data is relevant? (3) how to process it? (4) how to display the results? Extensive on-site investigations and computer work needed to be done. For the third goal, the literature review was further developed and scenarios were created, in order to assess which parking management measure was the most suitable for BMW FIZ. In all cases, specific recommendations were provided according to the findings.
For the final step, the whole team came together again. The findings of each sub-goal were discussed and combined into one global parking management concept. It was the occasion to confront on-site observations and own team findings to the various stakeholders’ claims.
The pros and cons of the FIZ Future proposal were also discussed, namely, what chances
6 and risks the proposal represents in terms of parking. The proposed global parking management concept aims to complete what FIZ Future is not likely to be able to achieve.
Table 2: Successive steps of the project Step 1: Global problem analysis
Becoming familiar with BMW FIZ
Several on-site explorations at FIZ and its surroundings
Identification of transport/parking infrastructure as well as critical zones for parking issues
Visit to the FIZ Future exhibition to collect data about the project proposed by Henn
Documentation about BMW employees, strategy and objectives Identify existing parking issues around BMW FIZ
Citizen discussions, planning documents, data from the city of Munich
Information communicated by BMW
Stakeholder analysis
Gaining insights into parking management
Journal articles, books, forums
Step 2: Goal oriented investigations
Investigate parking issues in a residential neighbourhood close to BMW FIZ
On-site visits to collect on-street parking data and witness parking conflicts
Data processing and interpretation
Recommendations based on issues observed and the literature review Assess utilisation, demand and accessibility of FIZ parking facilities
On-site investigations to collect data about utilisation of main parking facilities
Accessibility and demand analysis based on GIS software
Data processing and interpretation
Recommendations based on issues observed and literature review Look into innovative parking management strategies for FIZ
Extensive literature review about mobility/parking management strategies
Analysis of existing and future parking management solutions
Recommendations based on literature review and scenarios
7 Step 3: Parking concept proposal
Sum-up of main findings and confrontation between own results and stakeholders’ claims
Discussion about opportunities and risks brought by FIZ Future
Overall parking management concept proposal for BMW FIZ
The structure of the present paper was developed accordingly to those three steps. As a result, the next section presents the results of the first step, namely the global problem analysis of parking issues around BMW FIZ.