Comparison of intelligent parking guidance system and conventional system with regard to capacity utilisation

•Comparison of intelligent parking guidance system (IPGS) and conventional car park.•Examination of IPGS benefits on capacity utilisation.•Results demonstrate an alleviation in CO2, CO, HC, and NOx emissions by IPGS.•Benefits are shown in the value of time for Turkey, Germany, the U.K., and France. The capacity utilisation of car parks is an important issue because of space deficiency for infrastructure improvement in city centres. Intelligent Parking Guidance Systems (IPGSs) provide a solution to such shortages by managing car park capacity. In this study, an IPGS model is proposed concerning the occupancy condition of three surface car parks, and the proposed model is compared with the conventional system (CS) where drivers tend to prefer the closest parking utility. A multi-agent-based simulation program investigates five scenarios and the results compared regarding the occupancy ratio, wasted Value of Time (VoT), and emission of harmful gases. The simulation results illustrate that the proposed IPGS model manages to equilibrate the capacity utilisation of car parks and the parking search period compared with the CS model. Analysis results show that emissions for CS of CO2, CO, HC, and NOx are 398.71, 19.90, 3.29, and 21.14 g/s/veh, respectively. This is attributed to the extra search period in the CS models. Besides, the cost of this extra searching period in CS is estimated in terms of the value of time for Turkey, Germany, U.K., and France as 0.49, 0.93, 1.42, and 1.42 euro/veh respectively.