How the scorecard is built.

Sources#

INRIX has collected and maintained global on- and off-street parking datasets for more than a decade and are made available to customers via INRIX Parking Services. Metrics for the scorecard have been calculated using the global parking dataset and leverage INRIX Curb Analytics software.

Metrics definitions#

Availability is the probability of a driver finding an open parking space on a typical street block within a given area (e.g., downtown area, neighborhood, etc.). Availability is only predicted for blocks that allow parking for all drivers or areas with residential permit parking only. The average availability for an aggregated area, such as a downtown area or neighborhood, calculates the average of all availabilities predicted for all blocks in the area.

Availability metrics come from our predictive models that learn from various spatial and temporal data sources and datasets which include but are not limited to:

• Points of Interest (POIs) — concentration and proximity to shopping, eateries, schools, hospitals, etc.
• Demographics — population, age, land use, workplaces and residential areas, etc.
• Connected vehicle data — Park-In Park-Out events (PIPO), origins and destinations (INRIX Trips data), etc.
• Our own historical ground truth data — through regular testing our curb data in the field, we have amassed 3 million ground truth observations.

Cost is the average hourly rate to park within the aggregated area for the selected time period. On-street cost represents the average of all paid parking curb zones in the area. Off-street cost is the average of all paid parking lots in the area, excluding daily, weekly, and monthly rates. If there is no paid parking in the area and parking is allowed, the cost is zero. If there is no parking allowed, the cost is null.

On-street : off-street sets the two hourly rates against each other. It is a ratio, not a cost: at 1 : 2, an hour in a typical off-street lot costs twice what an hour at the curb costs in the same downtown area.

Off-street spaces are counted where demarcated by paint and visible from aerial imagery or posted by signage or websites that provide lot capacity. Spaces are estimated when none of the data sources are available. Estimation is based on the calculated area of the digitized parking area of the lot and number of floors.

The downtown area#

Every figure in the scorecard describes a downtown area: a —-radius disc of —, centered on each city's city hall. The disc is the same size in every city, so every city is compared over the same amount of ground.

The — downtown areas are chosen by demand, not by size. INRIX selected the cities for the scorecard based on input from INRIX customers, prioritizing where drivers and digital map users most often search for parking. The scorecard is not simply a list of the largest cities in each country, and a small city can have less parking availability in its downtown area than a much larger one. The figures do not include national averages: the report describes where parking is contested, by design.

The — downtown areas and surrounding neighborhoods are a small subset of what INRIX digitizes. Coverage outside of these cities is not included in the scorecard.

The time periods#

The scorecard reports on the following time periods, which represent a typical week:

The exchange rate#

Exchange rates are based on rates on —.

Rate as of

—

US dollar to euro

—

Comparisons, and the assumptions behind them#

Some figures on this site are stated as comparisons, such as the digitized curb compared to the circumference of the Earth, and to the Great Wall of China. These comparisons are drawn using arithmetic and reference lengths, and not actual measurements.

• Reference lengths. The Earth: —. The Great Wall of China: —. The line drawn for the wall is its main line from Shanhai Pass to Jiayu Pass, traced over OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL).
• Neighborhood areas are unofficial boundaries. In some cases, neighborhoods are derived from local agency defined wards and districts while in other cases they come from other local source knowledge. Every neighborhood the export carries is published, with no inclusion threshold applied: the INRIX On-Street Coverage Area overlaps between — and — of each one, with a median of — and — of the — published under half. Every neighborhood table states its own figure in the Coverage column. A narrowly covered neighborhood is a reading drawn from less ground, not a worse reading.