Cruising for parking around a circle

•Stochastic simulation of cruising for curbside parking round a circle.•Previous work has used the approximation that curbside vacancies occur independently.•That approximation may lead to severe underestimation of mean cruising-for-parking times.•Identifies four effects that lead to underestimation.•Results point to potential benefits of responsive curbside parking pricing.

Several recent papers have used the approximation that the number of curbside parking spaces searched before finding a vacant space equals the reciprocal of the expected curbside vacancy rate. The implied expected cruising-for-parking times are significantly lower than those that have been obtained through observation and simulation. Through computer simulation of cars cruising for parking around a circle in stochastic steady state, this paper shows that the approximation leads to underestimation of expected cruising-for-parking time and, at high occupancy rates, considerable underestimation. The paper also identifies several “effects” that contribute to the approximation being an increasingly poor one as the occupancy rate increases.