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Abstract:
Parking is synonymous to traffic congestion because failure to meet parking demand of people in a city leads to on-street parking which ultimately results to traffic congestion. Traffic congestion is a condition that occurs on roads when demand for parking is more than supply, and the features of traffic congestion are slower speeds, longer trip times, and increased vehicular queueing. The non-availability of space in urban centres has increased demand for parking space especially in urban centres. Inadequate off-street parking in most of our urban centres contributes to the problem of on-street parking coupled with inadequate traffic management. The aim of this field work is to obtain the total number of parking available, the concentration of parking and the duration of parking while the objectives were to: To determine the parking demand and to determine the parking supply. The methodology used was to collect data manually by taking note of the registration numbers of all parked vehicles in the area of study, which was patrolled in a period of thirty minutes interval. Since the survey was a four-hour duration survey, the study area was patrolled eight consecutive times. The study found the maximum occupancy at 12:00pm to be 68% with 27 vehicles parked, 12:30pm to be 60%, 1:00pm to be 60%, 1:30pm to be 58%, 2:00pm to be 63%, 2:30pm to be 60%, 3:00pm to be 60%, 3:30pm to be 53%, and 4:00pm to be 40% with 16 vehicles parked. The study recommends that ancillary parking facilities should be provided to take care of peak periods. The study concludes that demand was less than supply on this particular date, owing probably to the fact that the weather was very cold and windy. The temperature had dropped to 3?C on this date and many people preferred to stay indoors.
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