Customer: Organization for Planning and Environmental Protection of Thessaloniki

Duration: April 1996 – December 1996

The Master Plan for the Parking Policy in Municipality of Thessaloniki (Phase A’) was assigned by the Municipality of Thessaloniki to the Laboratory of Transport Engineering, Transport and Organization Section, Civil Engineering Department, A.U.Th. Part of the project was undertaken by TRUTh. S.A.
The basic objective of the study was the improvement of parking conditions in Thessaloniki through the design of appropriate parking policies and provision of new parking spaces in order to satisfy the parking demand in the city center. This demand consists of:
– the parking demand from the inhabitants of the city center
– the parking demand from the visitors and the employees of the same area
The main conclusions arising from this study were the following:
• The ratio of the parking demand over the parking supply varies between 2.2 and 3.3 into the examined 5 Zones in which the study area was divided.
• Short term parking is relatively small compared to long term parking, and this applies to all possible ways of on-street parking.
• The control of parking restrictions from the authorities during the peak hours varies depending on the zone.
• The parking measures which were proposed after the analysis of the existing parking situation in the city center consist of:
• Increase in the number of parking spaces. A number of 8763 on-street parking spaces was proposed. There are another 6500 parking spaces which are needed and part of them can be offered by the construction of off-street parking spaces. The proposed off-street parking spaces are around 4000 -5000.
• Design of an effective Parking Control System (authorized personnel, infrastructure, public information, etc).
• Design of a new Parking Pricing Policy.

Role of TREDIT:
TREDIT S.A was responsible for the creation of maps presenting the on-street parking conditions. These maps were created using GIS technology. In the framework of this task, special surveys were carried out in the city center in order to obtain all the necessary data regarding the parking characteristics. The study area was the first district (city center) of the Municipality of Thessaloniki (which consists of 5 districts).