The Application of Queueing Theory in the Parking Lot: a Literature Review

Waiting lines or queues are common in life, we often encounter a lot of queueing systems to wait for service regarding both crowd-based and random. Indeed, queing system is ubiquitous from customers queueing to pay at the supermarket, customers coming to make transactions at banks or customers waiting for medical examination at the hospital, etc. Queueing theory is the mathematical study of waiting for lines or queues and is one of the most commonly used mathematical tools for the performance evaluation of systems. Applications of queueing theory are increasing in various fields of life for example the banking sector, healthcare, traffic control, and computer science. This paper reviews the contributions and applications of queueing theory in parking lots. Applications of queueing theory in modeling parking lots processes are reviewed and categorized. Research purpose: This paper reviews the contributions and applications of queueing theory in parking lots. Applications of queueing theory in modeling parking lots processes are reviewed and categorized. Our purpose was to identify the leading areas of parking problems as modeled by queueing theory. Research motivation: In order to understand the importance, the application of queueing theory in parking lot, this paper aims to investigate research papers to gain insights into queueing theory and queueing models in parking lots. Research design, approach and method: This paper is designed as follows. Section 1 of this paper presents the research background. The search approach and papers selection are described in Section 2. In Section 3, we provide the different classifications in using queueing theory in parking lot management. Section 4 includes the list of literature on simulation-based queueing models in the parking lot. In Section 5, a descriptive analysis of the review is presented. Finally, Section 6 presents the summary and conclusions. We presented a review of 65 papers searched in the database of Google scholar. We collected high-quality papers that were peer-reviewed and published between 1972 and 2021 using structured keywords search and cross-referencing. Main findings: In this paper, applications of queueing theory in modeling parking processes have been reviewed and categorized. This paper reviewed the use of queueing theory for the analysis and design of different types of parking systems. Also, we have reviewed the simulation-based queueing models that have been presented. From this review, we found that most queueing theory application articles in parking management were published after 2000. A possible reason for the upward trend since 2000 is the advancement in computational power and software availability. Practical/managerial implications: Since parking is an essential component of today’s transportation system., improving the system performance is a very important goal. Queueing theory provides an effective and powerful modeling technique that can assist managers in achieving the aforementioned goal.