HANDELSHÖGSKOLAN - GRADUATE SCHOOL MASTER THESIS Supervisor: Michael Browne Graduate School An assessment of Park & Ride in Gothenburg A case study on the effect of Park & Ride on congestion and how to increase its attractiveness Written by: Sélim Oucham Pedro Gutiérrez Touriño Gothenburg, 27/05/2019 Abstract Traffic congestion is with environmental pollution one of the main cost externalities caused by an increased usage of cars in many cities in the last decades. In many ways, traffic congestion impacts the everyday life of both drivers and citizens. In this thesis, the authors study how one solution designed to tackle congestion, the Park & Ride service, is currently used in the city of Gothenburg, where it is referred as Pendelparkering. This scheme allows commuters to park their car outside the city and then use public transport to their destination, thus avoiding having more cars in the city centre and reducing congestion. The goal is to know to what extent it helps solving the problem of congestion as well as how it can be ameliorated to make it more attractive. In order to do so, an analysis of the theory on Park & Ride and traffic congestion is performed, including a benchmark of three cities using the system and different views on its effectiveness in reducing congestion. Then, an empirical study relating to the City of Gothenburg is realized. The challenges around Park & Ride and the way different stakeholders organise themselves to ensure the service is provided in a satisfying way are thoroughly investigated. Interviews with experts and users, on- site observations and secondary data collection were used as different approaches to answer these questions. The main conclusions of the thesis are that in the case of Gothenburg, Park & Ride plays a relevant role in helping reducing congestion, considering the infrastructure available and the commuting patterns of workers. However, even though the general satisfaction is high, the lack of space available came as the most important challenge. The authors therefore elaborated a solution following a Design Thinking approach in partnership with the innovation platform Coboom, as a suggestion to how digital tools could be used in Park & Ride to improve urban mobility in Gothenburg, but also potentially in other cities. Keywords: Park & Ride, commuter parking, traffic congestion, urban mobility, public transportation, Smart Cities 2 Acknowledgments First of all, we would like to thank Coboom for the opportunity of working with them during these last months. It has been a great experience to work in the companies involved: CGI, Volvo Cars and Stena Line. Specially, we want to thank Martin Högenberg, Lina Asadi, Staffan Davidsson and Sofia Hultsbo. Secondly, we want to thank our supervisor Michael Browne for his help during our thesis development. His advice and feedback during these past months has been very useful to us, as well as his openness to hear our opinion in the different topics and respect our choices. Third, we want to thank all the people that answered to our interviews. On one side, the Park & Ride users that kindly stopped on their way home to answer our questions. On the other hand, the experts from different organisations that saved us some time in their agenda to have an interview: Erik Behm, Gunnar Lanner, Lars Bern, Jonas Lidén and Marie Albihn. Also, to the organisations they represent: Business Region Göteborg, Göteborgs Stad and Västtrafik. Finally, we also want to thank our fellow colleagues that helped us improve our thesis during the midway and final seminars. This constructive feedback allowed us to enhance our work and submit a better document. ______________________ ______________________ Sélim Oucham Pedro Gutiérrez Touriño 3 Table of Contents 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 8 2 Purpose of the thesis and Research Question ................................................................. 10 2.1 Purpose .................................................................................................................... 10 2.2 Scope and delimitation of the thesis ........................................................................ 10 2.3 Research question .................................................................................................... 11 3 Theoretical framework and results of literature review .................................................. 12 3.1 How to reduce congestion? ..................................................................................... 13 3.1.1 Policy ................................................................................................................... 13 3.1.2 Infrastructure ....................................................................................................... 16 3.1.3 Technology .......................................................................................................... 17 3.2 Park & Ride solution ............................................................................................... 20 3.3 Applications of Park & Ride in other cities ............................................................ 24 3.4 Implications of the theoretical framework .............................................................. 30 4 Methods and methodology ............................................................................................. 31 4.1 Research strategy ..................................................................................................... 31 4.2 Research design ....................................................................................................... 32 4.3 Data collection ......................................................................................................... 33 4.4 Limitations .............................................................................................................. 36 4.5 Data analysis and outcome results .......................................................................... 36 4.6 Research quality problems ...................................................................................... 37 5 Results ............................................................................................................................ 39 5.1 The Gothenburg Case .............................................................................................. 39 5.2 Västtrafik analysis of Park & Ride users ................................................................ 49 5.3 On-site observation and surveys in Park & Ride sites ............................................ 50 5.4 Interviews with experts ........................................................................................... 52 5.5 Implications of the results ....................................................................................... 55 4 6 Analysis .......................................................................................................................... 56 6.1 Park & Ride usefulness in reducing traffic congestion ........................................... 56 6.2 Cooperation between organisations ........................................................................ 57 6.3 Safety ....................................................................................................................... 58 6.4 Business model ........................................................................................................ 59 6.5 Pricing: Should it be free? ....................................................................................... 61 6.6 Future and Impact of technology ............................................................................ 62 6.7 Attracting new Park & Ride users ........................................................................... 63 7 Conclusions .................................................................................................................... 65 References............................................................................................................................... 68 Appendix 1 – Importance of reducing congestion .................................................................. 76 Appendix 2 – Interview guides ............................................................................................... 83 Appendix 3 – Data from commuting ...................................................................................... 85 Appendix 4 – Data from different roads accessing Gothenburg ............................................ 86 Appendix 5 – All Park & Ride places in the Gothenburg Region .......................................... 89 Appendix 6 – Information about the Park & Ride sites visited .............................................. 91 Appendix 7 – Interviews with experts .................................................................................... 94 List of Tables Table 1 - Examples of soft policy (Friman et al., 2013) and (Cairns et al., 2008) ........................ 15 Table 2 – Experts interviewed during the thesis ........................................................................... 34 Table 3 - Information about the visits to parking sites .................................................................. 35 Table 3 – Pendelparkering sites in the municipalities surrounding Gothenburg (Appendix 4) .... 47 Table 4 – Where do city centre workers live ...............................................................................