Modeling of Parking Violations Using Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial Regression: A Case Study for Berlin

Abstract

Parking violations cause numerous problems, thus affecting daily mobility. Nevertheless, there are no extensive statistics on illegal parking in Germany, implying that the causes of this misconduct are still unexplored. The objective of this paper is to present a count data modeling approach for parking violations based on video footage taken from the windshields of driving vehicles, incorporating spatial data from OpenStreetMap (OSM). The main benefit of this data source is the transferability of the data collection procedure just by installing a recording device in vehicles of municipal services like waste collection. Moreover, the data from OSM are freely available for all cities. To account for excess zero counts in the street segments, a zero-inflated negative binomial distribution model was used to explain the number of violations per 100 m. “Excess” zeros were modeled using the logit part of the model, whereas the remaining counts of parking violations were fitted by the negative binomial model. Much effort was made to present the results of the count data models in an interpretable way. The most intuitive way seemed to be predictions of parking violations per 100 m (incidence rate) for different settings. Incidence rates were predicted for variations in explanatory variables, holding all other variables constant. We found parking violations per 100 m to be highest in main shopping streets. In addition, free parking spaces negatively- and the number of points of interest (such as buildings, craft stores, and shops) positively affected illegal parking.