From Sensing to Impact: LiDAR-Based Parking Guidance for Narrow Streets in a Coastal Tourist Village

In tourist destinations with limited road and parking capacities, seasonal surges in private vehicle traffic often cause external diseconomy, including congestion and traffic calming issues. Conventional infrastructure-based solutions for tourist parking management are frequently too large or inflexible to address spatially and temporally localized problems effectively. This study investigates a compact, deployable parking guidance system designed to mitigate traffic issues caused by private tourist vehicles accessing a narrow street. A field experiment was conducted in Apr 2025 at Higashi-Hazu Beach, Nishio City, Japan. A real-time vehicle counting system is developed for an ungated seaside parking lot using only two roadside Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors to monitor the entries and exits at access points. Accuracy validation against video recordings confirms consistent detection performance even under high-traffic and mixed pedestrian conditions. To proactively guide drivers, a Variable Message Sign (VMS) dynamically displays the congestion status (“Congested”, or “Full”) at a key intersection preceding a narrow access street. The display content is automatically updated based on real-time vehicle counts obtained from the LiDAR sensors. Comparative analysis between periods with and without the VMS reveal a significant increase in vehicles diverting to a fringe parking lot during “Congested” conditions when the sign is active. This study demonstrates that a compact and deployable LiDAR-based guidance system can affect driver behavior and contribute to more sustainable parking management in tourism-heavy regions, mainly in areas where the conventional methodology is too extensive to implement.