Determining the desired amount of parking using game theory

The problem of seeking an optimal parking policy is formulated here as a Stackelberg game between the government and the travelers. The government wishes to encourage transit ridership while keeping a strong urban center; unlike most existing tools that assist in determining parking policies, the proposed game includes an explicit quantitative formulation of the governmental objective. Each traveler wishes to gain a maximum utility from his choice of destination and transportation mode, and the choice distribution of all travelers is obtained by Logit model. A fundamental difference exists between Game Theory practice and common assumptions used in transportation modeling regarding the relationship between a single traveler's utility and the choice distribution of all travelers. This difference is tackled here through the definition of the player that represents the travelers and its objective function. A simple version of the game is tested in 24 imaginary scenarios of transportation and urban conditions.