Review Reports - Assessment of Automated Parking Garage Services as a Means to Sustainable Traffic Development in a Mid-Sized City

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper applies a sliding average method considering the conduction of auto-correlation function and a least squares regression method to predict the utilization rate of two large-scale automated parking garage in Ostrava, Czech Republic. The main data collection in this study took place from 2010 to 2022. The main purpose is to analyze the impact of some factors on the growth trend of car park number, including the seasonal impact, data statistics interval, upper and lower confidence bounds. In general, this study has done some mathematical research around two automated parking garages of Ostrava. But as a reader in this field, I think the paper also needs to go through a thorough revising for further improvement. My specific comments to improve the paper are as follows:

Firstly, the text arranging of this paper is hard to follow and the wording needs further optimizations. For example, the title is “Assessment of automated parking garage services as means to sustainable traffic development in a middle-sized city”. It does not highlight the key issue to be addressed in this article. Many aspects of urban traffic would influence the sustainable development of city. Why the authors chose the parking services as the main means? And what is the relationship between growth trend of car park number and sustainability of urban development?

Secondly, the literature review in introduction section needs to be improved. There should be many research paper around the car park number prediction around these years. The references mentioned in this article are too “old”. Please carefully quote the dissertation of university and add some high-quality papers of transportation journals.

Thirdly, the author said “the current motorization degree is now very different from what it was 20 years ago, which is why there is such a large deficiency of parking spots” (page 3, line 127-128), which I agree with that. But what I confuse is that why the seasonal impact on summary plot of time series is so consistent. Did I miss something?

Fourthly, the authors lack explanations for illustrating why they chose the sliding average method and least squares method to forecast the growth trend of car park number. Is there any better model to make prediction?

Lastly, to improve readability and comprehensively of this paper, some details of this article, such as the figures and their illustrations, needs to be further optimized.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

thank you very much for your time and notes. Changes done with respect to your comments are highlighted with green color. As for the comments:

The text was rearranged to better capture the point of the paper.
Literature review was improved.
The seasonal component is strictly periodic element, so it must be consistent. The amount of it determines the measure of seasonal behavior. We have added an explanation to this one.
We commented more on the methods used and mentioned other possible methods for future work.

Thank you once again for your notes.

Sincerely,

the authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Attention to sustainability must be fundamental, especially for the construction of new practices.

Sustainability is a broad picture, involving social, environmental and economic aspects.

So how does the manuscript address sustainability? In which of the zones?

From an environmental point of view, it does not seem appropriate to facilitate the provision of individual transport, as in the case of rest areas, as it encourages the use of a polluting source. How do you justify it?

From an economic point of view, how can the proposal be considered sustainable?

And for the company?

I think the methodological discourse needs to be broadened, especially as regards the models used to select the areas.

Finally, recommending to update the conceptual discussion of the proposal.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

thank you very much for your time and comments. Changes regarding your recommendations are highlighted with blue color.

We improved literature review.
We commented more on the point of view of individual transport and why we think it needs to be addressed.
Same goes for possible profit as the occupancy of the RING house was 40% at its peak, so there is a large room for increasing the numbers.
Other methods were mentioned as well as the used one were commented more.

Thank you once again.

Sincerely,

the authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is certainly interesting for the topic and certainly offers interesting food for thought, but there are many points that are not clear and need to be supplemented and reviewed.

Starting from the Abstract and the Introduction, no reference is made to the effect of COVID-19 on the use of parking, while the energy issue is dealt with. In the development of the paper, there are many references and studies on COVID and very little on energy consumption. It is necessary to take into account this fact.

The paper analyzes the RING system, but it is not at all clear what it is, where it is located, what it is about. It would be necessary to include a small map of Ostrava locating what was discussed and perhaps a scheme of how the system works.

Paragraph 3 is very confusing and brings together elements that should be distinguished (description of the situation in Ostrava, parking systems, data collection, methods,…), so it needs to be reorganized.

Among other things, the Multitower system appears and it is not clear whether it is part of the RING or of the set of analyzed data or of both. What is it and why is it mentioned and described when it then seems to disappear in the rest of the paper?

In the line 164 what do the numbers represent and what is the unit of measurement?

In paragraph 3.4 different data are used to explain the evolution of the phenomenon, it is necessary to standardize even if the usefulness of this small paragraph is not understood if not inserted in the context of the described city.

In the description of the formulas, it is better to always use bulleted lists.

As previously highlighted, paragraph 3.7 talks about which parking spaces and which area. A map of the city is missing and, as usual, it is not clear whether the reference is only the RING or also the Multitower.

Furthermore, the passage from N (number of parking spaces) to the following part which speaks of spaces per inhabitant, apartments and so on is not understood. This part certainly needs to be better developed and explained and inserted more carefully into the logic of the paper.

Most of paragraph 5 deals with the issue related to COVID-19 which is not reflected in the previous parts of the paper. The same for conclusions.

The Conclusions are too concise and do not analyze the numerical results obtained and their implications.

Paragraph 6 discussion seems more like an Introduction than a paragraph in which authors discuss what has been achieved.

Line 96, 165, 246, 270 check for misprints.

Line 152 It is preferable when using acronyms, to also give them the extended form the first time they are used.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

thank you very much for your time and your notes. Changes done with respect to your comments are highlighted with red color.

We commented the RING system more thoroughly. The numbers on the (former) line 164 were GPS coordinates. We underlined this fact.
The paragraphs were re-structured.
Multitower was discarded from the paper as unnecessary. It is the second APS garage in Ostrava and was added to the paper only for the sake of context.
Bullets were added for the description of the formulas.
We moved the example of parking spaces calculation in order to better fit in the context. We also slightly altered the explanations regarding this formula.
After these changes, we agreed that the discussion fits the findings and the point we were trying to prove, so we modified it only slightly.

Once again, thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely,

the authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Following are my comments after reading your manuscript.

1. “in a larger city such as Ostrava over the years” in abstract is inconsistent with the statement of the topic “in a middle-sized city”.

2. Why is the time span of the abscissa in Figure 4 uneven? The author needs to give reasons or optimize it to uniform time. Other similar figures need to be corrected together.

3. The critical time for the occurrence of COVID-19 needs to be determined according to the corresponding basis, and its selection is very important for the analysis of the relevant laws.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

thank you very much for your time and comments. Changes done with respect to your comments are highlighted with violet color.

You are absolutely right, the word "larger" in abstract was changed.
We are sorry, but the stepping in Figure 4 is consistent with step of 18 months. Different figures have slightly different stepping from graphic reasons and also because of two different data sizes (108 vs 137 months).
We specified the indices of pandemic months, as well as commented on the change of two basis functions for the new data.

Thank you once again.

Sincerely,

the authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I think that although their revisions can be improved, this paper could be accepted.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

thank you for your time. We have done some really minor changes this time, just to point out the link between COVID-19, the RING system and its energy consumption.

Thank you once again and have a nice end of the year.

Sincerely,
the authors

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have sufficiently answered what has been highlighted and the paper certainly appears to have improved.

However, there are still two unanswered questions that are reported in full from the first review:

1) the first concerns the issue relating to COVID 19

Most of paragraph 5 deals with the issue related to COVID-19 which is not reflected in the previous parts of the paper. The same for Conclusions

2) the second concerns the issue relating to Conclusion

The Conclusions are too concise and do not analyze the numerical results obtained and their implications.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

thank you once again for your notes. Minor changes are highlighted in red color.

We have commented on the fact that RING APS is used mostly for traveling issues, thus COVID-19 restrictions had to affect its use significantly. Considering the energy consumption, we only discuss this issue, particularly for the RING APS and we concluded that the utilization rate does not affect the overall energy demand of the building (paragraph highlighted), which is caused by the architecture of the system.

As for the conclusions, we would like to improve them but we are not sure which part you consider too concise. The main results and their implications as well as future work are discussed. We are sorry for possible misunderstandings.

Have a nice day,
sincerely,

the authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Although this paper still has more room for improvement, I think it could be published on Sustainability.