Public charging opportunity for U.S. cities based on parking lot data

The objective of this study is to evaluate the opportunity for public charging for a subset of US cities by using available public parking lot data. The capacity of the parking lots weighted by the daily parking occupancy rate is used as a proxy for daily parking demand. The city's public charging opportunity is defined as the percentage of parking demand covered by chargers on the off-street parking network. We assess this opportunity under the scenario of optimal deployment of public chargers. We use the maximum coverage model to optimally locate those facilities on the public garage network. We compare the optimal results to the actual placement of chargers. These empirical findings are of great interest to policymakers as those showcase the potential of increasing opportunities for charging under optimal charging location planning.