Analysis of Parking Lot Utilization Efficiency and Study on Setting Scale in Highway Service Areas

With the increase in traffic flow on China's highways, the issue of unreasonable resource allocation in service area parking lots has gradually become apparent, severely constraining the service quality of highway service areas. However, traditional methods for determining the scale of service area parking lots are mostly based on empirical formulas, resulting in insufficiently accurate outcomes. Addressing this issue, this paper conducts a study on the utilization efficiency and setting scale of service area parking lots, proposing two evaluation indicators: the proportion of queuing vehicles (QR) and the proportion of vehicle queuing time (TQR). A method for determining the scale of service area parking lots based on actual data and simulation techniques is proposed, and an example analysis is conducted using X service area. This method, based on real data, characterizes the usage patterns of four vehicle types in service area parking lots through distribution fitting, and explores the changes in parking lot utilization efficiency with varying numbers of parking spaces through simulation experiments, thereby determining the optimal parking space setting scale. The research results show that this method is more refined and specific compared to traditional methods, providing suitable parking lot setting scales for service areas of different grades and traffic volumes, significantly improving the utilization efficiency of service area parking lots.