Parking Experiment

Due to the cancellation of class today I had a little free time to spare. So I asked myself why the black and red lots look so much fuller than the white lot in the Thomas and Mack parking area.

From there I conducted an experiment to find out the average number of cars coming in from the Thomas & Mack entrance and which lot they parked in. I conducted five different rounds, with each round including ten vehicles coming in from Swenson. The experiment only lasted about 40 minutes, but I found on average six out of ten vehicles will park their car in the black and red lots. The other four will park their car in the white lot.

Three rounds out of the five showed a ratio of 6:4. While one round showed 8:1, and only in one round the drivers parked their cars in the white lot rather than the black and red lots, this was a 3:7 ratio.

This means that 29 out of 50 vehicles,on average, will park their car in the black and red lots rather than the white lot.  This is almost 60% of every 50 vehicles that use the Thomas & Mack entrance.

So, yes, they’re might be an over-crowdness, but according to my experiment the over-crowdness is due to decisions made by drivers to park in the most congested area. 

If there is six out of ten cars parking on one side of the lot, there will be one extra spot in the white lot for every ten cars that park in the black and red lots.   This isn’t  rocket science, just simple numbers.