- Wed 09 December 2020
- data
In the beginning of 2020, I analysed the parking demand in Marburg using publicly available data here. This article now is an update to my previous study to account for the Corona pandemic 2020.
Figure 1 shows the number of used parking spots against time and compares the pre and during Corona numbers.
Figure 1: Used parking spots in Marburg against time. Black corresponds to the time before Corona and red corresponds to the time during Corona.
Less parking spots were used during Corona times when compared to the pre Corona situation. On average, around 130 parking spots less are used which is a 20% decrease in the number of used parking spots in Marburg. Figure 2 shows the number of parking spots that each of the parking decks provided separately.
Figure 2: Parking spots supplied by each parking deck. Again black corresponds to the time before Corona and red corresponds to the time during Corona. Orange corresponds to the months of March to May and October to December - times of large increases in Corona cases.
Almost all parking decks were used less. Interestingly, the Marktdreieck - Parkdeck showed no difference to before. That is probably because this particular parking deck is almost exclusively used for parking during medical doctor visits. Clearly, the Corona virus did not decrease the demand in going to the medical doctor. Interestingly, the parking decks are influenced differently by the Corona pandemic: For example, the city parking deck shows little decrease while the ahrens parking deck was used much less. The latter is probably due to ahrens being the parking deck of a large mall that suffers economically due to Corona and online sellers in general.
Concluding, the Corona pandemic lead to a decrease in the number of used parking spots of around 20%. In particular, the number of used parking spots connected to retail decreased significantly during the pandemic. Personally, I am surprised that the number of used parking spots did not decrease even more during the Corona pandemic. One reason for that might be financial aid programs by the city council, e.g. the Stadt Geld.