Analyzing long-term parking preferences at Imam Khomeini International Airport: a stated preference approach

This paper employed a stated preference approach to examine the long-term parking preferences of passengers at Imam Khomeini International Airport, with a particular focus on their propensity to use public and paratransit modes. A total of 377 passengers were investigated with 4 price scenarios and 6 mode choice options to access the airport, and discrete choice models, including binary, nested, and multinomial logit, were employed to evaluate the impact of parking price on passenger behavior. The likelihood ratio test was used to validate the models, and finally, using the sensitivity analysis, the effect of each variable on passenger choice for parking in the airport parking lot, as well as the sensitivity of each mode choice option to changes in parking prices, were examined. The binary logit model results indicated that married travelers with larger social networks and longer trip durations coming from their personal homes were less likely to park their vehicles at the airport. While the assumption of nesting behavior of options could not be confirmed, the multinomial logit model exhibited better performance than other models. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis revealed that a 3.8% increase in parking fees, from 1.3 to $2, would reduce the probability of choosing an airport parking lot by 8.2%, while increasing the probability of selecting a drop-off personal vehicle, rental car, taxi, and Metro by 3.8, 4.9, 11.7, and 4.3%, respectively. These findings can inform policymakers in developing effective airport parking pricing strategies to encourage greater use of public and paratransit modes among passengers.