Advanced Park & Ride Network

Summary

Donostia-San Sebastian was eager to achieve a better integration between trips made by car and public transport. The city decided to develop a new management and pricing strategy of the Park and Ride offer and step up the promotion of the service to drivers.

Implementing sustainable mobility

Donostia-San Sebastian wanted more people who do not have a public transport connection where they start their journey to leave their car outside the city centre and catch a public transport connection from there. A more efficient use of Park and Ride facilities in Donostia-San Sebastian was also seek, since these facilities were partly used by people who do not travel on by public transport. The city expected that a new integrated pricing strategy and improvements to the public transport system would lead to better use of the Park and Ride service among visitors and commuters. The main objectives of the measure were to:

• Increase the use of the Park and Ride offer; and
• Increase the modal split of public transport.

Progress

Following a promotional campaign in December 2009, when the municipality of Donostia-San Sebastian promoted Park and Ride services to people from the wider region who entered the city for Christmas shopping, four car park locations were selected to provide permanent P&R services due to their good connection to the main public transport lines, as well as its location nearby the main arterial corridors entering the city. The selected parking facilities were: Ondarreta, Lautximinieta, Riberas de Loyola and Illumbe.

The measure was also intended to implement a new management scheme for these parking facilities, in line with the P&R concept, and ensure a better integration between car and public transport. But several factors have delayed the implementation of this measure, being the main one the introduction of a generalized regulation for all four parking facilities, which would no longer be available for free. The idea was to start charging a fee for parking in all four P&R locations, while providing discounted rates to those users connecting with public transport. But soon after the regulation scheme was implemented in one of the selected parking facilities (Lautximinieta car park) strong public and political opposition emerged against the new regulation scheme and decision makers postponed its implementation until more solid grounds for its political support and public acceptance were achieved.

Also, during the project lifetime the management of the Onderreta site was transferred from the municipality back to the University that decided to use the land for other purposes.

Nevertheless, some steps ahead to strengthen the P&R concept were taken. In particular, P&R facilities were identified as such and vertical signing allocated along the main corridors entering the city aiming to encourage commuters to use them and easily guide them to these facilities. Also, sing post indicating location and walking distance to public transport connections were implemented in all P&R facilities.

The signage and routing towards the P&R areas have been improved in a parallel with the CIVITAS measure on the P&R guidance system.

Outcomes

This measure was part of a package of measures aimed to reduce the number of cars entering in the city centre. It was especially related to the measures on the new parking pricing and zoning strategy and the measure on P&R guidance system. Although the P&R scheme was not implemented to its full extent, and therefore no significant results achieved, the process implementation of this measure highlighted the importance of building a sound political consensus before implementing what could be seen as parking restriction measures by a share of the population. Also it is very important to provide regular and clear information about the measure objectives, including overall sustainable mobility issues, especially to the media, so that this information can be used to boost the measure and not to penalize it.