2019 International Conference on Mechatronics, Robotics and Systems Engineering (MoRSE)

4-6 December 2019, Bali, Indonesia

Parking Space Optimization Using Simplex Method

Linear Programming
Chyn Ira C. Crisostomo Dr, Renann G. Baldovino
Manufacturing Engineering & Management Department, Manufacturing Engineering & Management Department
De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract – The rise in private vehicles has led to the rise in proportional to the available parking space. This results in the
the demand for parking, and this demand calls for the need of unauthorized parking in sidewalks, which then congests the
existing parking areas to be fully optimized in order to area and contributes to the worsening of traffic. There are a
accommodate as much vehicles as possible. With the utilization lot of places that are not utilizing its space well, and this
of linear programming, a proposed optimization of the Enrique
problem has to be addressed in order to cater to the growing
Razon Sports Center parking in DLSU, Manila is proposed.
Since its current driveway is much wider than the minimum needs of the population.
width required by the Building Code of the Philippines, it is It is more likely that the building of parking spaces will
narrowed down in order to make room for more parking slots. be near commonly crowded places such as malls, universities,
The Simplex Method was used in order to obtain the maximized
parking area on each floor, which resulted in the addition of 36
and commercial or business districts. Parking is an essential
slots per floor. This optimization will increase the building’s factor in the effectiveness of private transportation. Every
parking capacity and will bring added convenience to the time a vehicle is used for a trip, it always starts and ends with
Lasallian academic community. the parking lot [4]. Hence they affect the overall performance
of the transportation system as a whole, and a good and
Index Terms – linear program, optimization, parking space.
efficient layout or design is needed [5].
I. INTRODUCTION De La Salle University is one of the prominent schools in
In recent years, the Philippines has been pushing to the country, and every year, more and more students are
improve on its transportation system with the help of the having difficulty in finding an available space to park their
government through various infrastructure projects. This in vehicles. The designated parking located in its Enrique Razon
turn was a forming solution to the rising population growth Sports Center is becoming more congested and is affecting
in the country which resulted in the increased quantity of the convenience of its students. Hence, the maximization of
privately owned vehicles as well as public transportation building parking is acknowledged and targeted in this study.
vehicles such as buses, jeepneys, UV’s, and taxis [1]. Linear programming is one of the tools used in operations
Transportation is an essential factor for the Philippine research or sometimes referred to as management science.
economy as it affects the day-to-day activities of all its This scientific approach of solving business and industrial
citizens. Efficient and effective transportation – the need to problems under certain conditions is widely used in the
minimize the time for people to get from one place to another design and operation of better systems. Linear programming
is vital for the sustainability of the nation. is a type of model that can solve decision problems with many
The goal therefore is to be more efficient in the allocation variables which are limited by a set of constraints. These
of one’s time, which resulted in the rise of privately owned constraints are described using mathematical functions. LP
vehicles for transportation. In 2012, there were around 1.9 modelling examples include product mix problems, resource
million vehicles registered in Metro Manila alone. This had a allocation problems, workforce scheduling, and aggregate
significant 15% increase from the numbers in 2008. With planning problems.
367,728 vehicles traversing daily on the average, EDSA
II. PARKING SPACE CAPACITY PLANNING
(Epifanio de los Santos Avenue), remains the National
Capital Region’s most congested road, based on 2017 The following topics discuss parking lot maximization in
estimates. Vehicles that pass through this highway account the most effective process in order to accommodate more cars
for 13.6% of the average daily traffic in Metro Manila, which given the available space present in their area.
is reported at 2.7 million vehicles. Cars make up two-thirds
A parking capacity optimization by linear programming
of the volume of traffic in EDSA, while jeepneys, UVs, taxis
was conducted in the United Arab Emirates [6]. The research
and buses makeup footer11.4% [2]. It was found that 247,527
discusses the overpopulation of vehicles in the area and the
privately owned vehicles are present in the highways at the
accumulating lack of parking spaces for those vehicles. The
same time there was only 40,000 public transportation
most integral factor in their research for parking spaces is the
vehicles [3]. This means that there are more privately owned
angle at which the cars are parked. The most efficient parking
cars and growing at the rate that the parking availability
angle was taken into consideration but lacks various factors
decreases. The problem arises however, is that there are more
such as the geometry and the circulation that the lot follows.
privately owned cars growing at a rate which is inversely

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 discovered the more optimal solution for applying a 60-
degree angle in parking spaces rather than with a smaller
angle such as a 45-degree angle which takes up more space.
A more efficient way is parking vertically at 90 degrees but
will take more time in order to park the vehicle as it is more
difficult to enter and leave the vehicle [6].
A research was conducted on the University of KwaZulu-
Fig. 1. Suggested Circulation Configuration [6]. Natal (UKN), Westville Campus. It tackles on the major land
use challenge found in campus planning. The researcher
Fig. 1 shows the suggested configuration for circulation
found that many studies have looked at the parking problem
as it provides the most efficient standard in parking lot
from the administrative and management points of view. This
effectiveness that would save time and space for drivers.
was solved by the optimization theory of four sets of data that
Another study was done in Los Angeles, California. They were generated to mimic real life scenarios of parking supply
also took into consideration the standard for their country’s and the demand on the campus for reserved and unreserved
parking spaces in the Department of Transportation’s parking spaces. The data sets consisted of parking lots and
building code and safety standard [7]. Each parking space has office buildings in the case study. And it involved the use of
a distinct dimension and varies in the lot from 30.48 to 152.4 CPLEX solver which was incorporated in AIMMS software.
meters with increments of 7.62 and 15.24 meters [7]. Results were obtained from the meta-heuristic algorithms and
proved optimal [9].
Different scenarios were used to optimize the parking
spaces based on the nature of the building. “The first one used Another research conducted was in Chalmers University
the initial condition which has a width of 2.45 meters, the of Technology which provided a discussion on the
aisle according to the initial conditions that is for 90°and 60° optimization of the parking layout in general. The linear
angles is 5.98 meters, and for 45° and 30° angle is 3.5 meters” programming was done by applying a pattern-based MILP
[8]. The third one is based on the standards of the Directorate formulation that considers rows of parking spots as items.
General of Land Transportation using a pedestrian facility The solutions came from two approaches which included a
that has similarities with second scenario but at an angle of spot formulation. It places spots individually and computes
90° the alley size is 6.5 meters. These are all scenarios of a only for a small number of parking spots. The second
mall parking building which takes into account the size of the approach involved a pattern formulation. Both simulations
driveway between two parked vehicles [8]. were done in an XML file that was read by the program. The
TABLE I. SUMMARY OF THE INCREASE IN UTILIZATION
.lp file was sent to an external solver CPLEX or Gurobi [10].

Parking Angle (degrees) Max Parking Produced (%) IV. METHODOLOGY

90 67 Using the laser measuring tool, the length and width of
75 23
the Enrique Razon Sports Center as well as the allocated
60 8
parking space and driveway per floor were measured. The
45 2
30 0 area of each parking slot was also measured to be 2.4 meters
x 5.3 meters, or 12.72 square meters. The building has a total
A discussion reveals that a 90-degree angle for parking area of 3150 square meters but due to other factors like the
spaces are the most effective way of parking and that a 75- stairs, the ramp, and the presence of chairs in some areas, only
degree angle was the second most effective way. The TABLE 1863-1915 square meters are available for parking. The
I shows the parking angle with respect to the maximum current driveway has a width of 5.3 meters to 6.7 meters, and
parking produced by percentage. Based on this study, a 90 has a total computed area of 858.27 square meters. Shown in
degree angled parking slot would still be considered for the the Fig. 2 is the actual floor plan of the Razon building.
Enrique Razon Sports Center given that it has more than
enough space for its driveways. The current layout is already
suited for university parkings with large driveways [6].
According to the Building Code of the Philippines, the
average parking slot should at least measure 2.4 meters x 5
meters for perpendicular or diagonal parking [9]. This size
would fit most vehicles used in the country, even the larger
types such as Toyota Land Cruiser or Fortuner. A commercial
parking building which is classified under class E building
should also have a minimum ceiling height of 2.7 meters for
the first floor and 2.4 meters for the succeeding floors. The
driveway must also have minimum width of 3 meters.
III. LP MODELLING
For the case study found, Integer Linear Programming
was used to determine the optimal parking angle. They Fig. 2. Enrique Razon Sports Center floor plan.

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 Based on the actual floor plan, a clearer layout with The Sports Center currently holds three floors allocated
dimensions of each floor was drawn with the use of Adobe for the parking of DLSU students and professors – 83 slots in
Photoshop (see Figs. 3-6). Various factors such as poles, the 3rd floor at Fig. 4, 86 slots in the 4th floor at Fig. 5, and 79
stairs, and chairs were also accounted for in the drawn layout. slots in the 5th floor at Fig. 6. It is only necessary to rework
and maximize its space in order to accommodate more
vehicles given the limited space that it currently has, as well
as to improve the academic community’s overall experience.
This is formulated in the following linear program.
yi - the available area for floor i’s driveway in meters2
xi - the available area for floor i’s parking in meters2
i - 3, 4, 5 (corresponding to every parking floor)

25 25 25
= 3 + 4 + 5
318 318 318
− 3− 4− 5
Fig. 3. Measurement of current parking slots. . . .

subjected to the following constraints:

3 + 3 ≤ 1914.03
4 + 4 ≤ 1952.19
5 + 5 ≤ 1863.15
3 ≥ 390.3
4 ≥ 390.3
5 ≥ 390.3
3, 4, 5, 3, 4, 5 ≥ 0

The researchers obtained the objective function by

maximizing the area for parking spaces using linear
programming. The constant 25/318 that can be seen in the X’s
Fig. 4. The 3rd floor parking layout. variables was obtained by using the area per slot which is
1/(2.4 m x 5.3 m) which is then subtracted with the area of
the driveway that has a value of 390.3 square meters. The
constant 1/44.22 that can be seen in the Y’s variables was
obtained by using the area of the current driveway available
for a car which is 1/(6.7 m x 6.6 m).

V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Upon solving the program using an online simplex
method solver (phpsimplex.com), the researchers were able
to obtain a total optimized area of 1523.73 square meters for
the 3rd floor, 1561.89 square meters for the 4th floor, and
1472.85 square meters for the 5th floor (see TABLE II). All
three floors also obtained the minimum allowable driveway
area of 390.3 square meters. Dividing the total optimized area
Fig. 5. The 4th floor parking layout. by the area per slot which is 12.72 square meters and then
subtracting the current slots per floor would give the
additional slots that could be added per floor. It was obtained
that a total of 36 slots per floor would be possible given that
the driveway was greatly reduced, and all its measurements
would still fit the parameters stated in the Building Code of
the Philippines [11]. The layout of these 36 additional slots is
up to the administration and is out of the scope of this study.

TABLE II. THE OPTIMAL SOLUTION USING SOLVER

Z x3 x4 x5 y3 y4 y5

331.89 1523.73 1561.89 1472.85 390.3 390.3 390.3

Fig. 6. The 5th floor parking layout.

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 The evidence shows that the parking lot in the Enrique drivers in the morning, and will ultimately fix the parking
Razon Sports Center is not yet in its developed and optimal shortage problem of the university.
stage. The application of optimization method through linear
programming determines the most effective measurements REFERENCES
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