Research on the Impact of Parking and Parking Behavior on Traffic Flow Based on VISSIM Simulation: Taking the Downtown Area of Ningbo as an Example

In order to study the influence of cruising for parking on traffic flow, this paper investigates the behavior data of cruisers, such as GPS trajectory, time, speed, acceleration, lane-change frequency, and distracted time of the cruising vehicles. The microscopic traffic flow simulation models of traffic flow with different proportions of cruising vehicles are built by VISSIM simulation. The influence of cruising behavior on average speed, parking times, delay, and queue length of road network. Two conclusions are drawn in this paper. First, cruising for parking behavior has a negative impact on road network traffic flow that reduced the traffic speed, increased parking times, delay, and queue length. Second, the traffic speed of road network decreased by 11%, queue length increased by 110%, delay increased by 26%, and parking times increased by 29% when the proportion of cruising for parking vehicles in the area is about 30%.