Rethinking parking strategies: It’s not just about supply

Using mobile data to understand parking demand (not just supply)

We have been fortunate to work with a number of clients over the past six months on all thing’s car parking. When we talk about parking, the conversation often starts and ends at the individual car space.

·       How many spaces are there?

·       How full are they at peak times?

·       Do we need more?

But parking demand doesn’t start at the individual car parking spaces. It starts with people, places, and purpose. That’s where mobile data is changing how we understand parking, the trends and land use more broadly.

Seeing demand before the car arrives

Traditional parking studies focus on supply and occupancy, how many cars are parked, where, and when. While useful, this approach captures only a snapshot of behaviour after decisions have already been made.

Anonymous mobile device data allows us to step back and understand arrival patterns:

·       Where are trips coming from?

·       How arrival times vary across the day?

·       How long people are likely to stay?

·       How many are new versus returning users?

Instead of observing parked vehicles, we begin to understand the demand drivers (pardon the pun!) behind them.

Connecting parking to land use, trip purpose, and place outcomes

One of the biggest advantages of mobile data is its ability to link parking behaviour to what people are actually doing.

By analysing time-of-day patterns and dwell times, we can distinguish between behaviours such as commuter and staff parking versus short-stay retail visits; frequent versus occasional users; the impacts of educational and institutional demands, including seasonal variances during university and school holiday periods; and evening or weekend activity driven by entertainment and sport.

Understanding these patterns provides valuable insight into how different land uses generate parking demand across the day and night and why a single “peak” rarely tells the whole story. For mixed-use precincts, and entertainment and sporting destinations in particular, this insight is critical to avoiding over- or under-provision of parking.

Importantly, these decisions extend beyond supply and demand they directly shape the quality and vibrancy of a place. When parking is aligned with how people use a centre, it can support higher turnover, more active frontages, and a better balance between cars and people. In this way, optimised parking becomes a tool for placemaking helping create centres that are not only functional, but engaging, accessible, and lively throughout the day and into the evening.

Beyond static counts: Understanding change over time

Mobile data also supports trend analysis rather than one-off surveys which can be skewed by weather, seasonal variations and unplanned issues on the transport network. It allows planners and parking asset owners to understand the effects of flexible work and hybrid schedules as well as seasonal or event-driven variation. This makes parking studies more resilient in environments where land use, travel behaviour and policy settings are evolving quickly.

Like any data source, mobile data isn’t a silver bullet. It is one tool among many which helps us narrow down or start asking questions. It allows us to undertaken large sample sizes and allows for continuous coverage. It will give greater insight into arrival patterns, temporal behaviour and give the ability to contextualise parking within broader travel behaviour.

It also has limitations. Spatial resolution is not fine enough to identify individual parking spaces, loading zones, or drop-off bays. Interpretation requires care to avoid over-confidence in the data. And privacy considerations must be rigorously managed, with all analysis relying on fully anonymised, aggregated data.

The real value comes from combining mobile data with on-ground observations and local context, not replacing them.

Ultimately, smarter parking studies unlock better optimisation, enhance land use decisions guiding smarter use of every space. By understanding why, when and how people arrive (not just where they park) we can design parking strategies that better support centres, precincts and communities.

Parking isn’t just a supply problem. It’s a land use story. And the more clearly, we can tell that story with data, the better our planning outcomes will be.