Disabled Parking CV: Scalable Methods to Analyze Disability Parking using Computer Vision and High-Resolution Aerial and Streetscape Images

People with disabilities disproportionately rely on public transportation to access employment, education, and healthcare services; however, public transit is not always available or equally distributed, which excludes social and community participation. Car transit is thus the only viable alternative. Since the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) of 1990, 4-8% of public parking spaces need to be reserved for drivers/passengers with disabilities, providing wide, accessible spaces close to destinations. And yet, there has been no systematic, large-scale study of the allocation and sizes of disability parking spaces across the US. The limited prior work that does exist has employed questionnaire methods to survey disabled drivers or examines the appropriate design of the disabled parking spot itself (e.g., its dimensions). In this project, the research team proposes building and evaluating state-of-the-art computer vision (CV) methods applied to emerging high resolution aerial photography—such as the open 0.08 meter/pixel orthoimagery of Washington DC (DC Orthophoto, 2021)—to semi-automatically (1) track the allocation of disability parking in public and commercial lots; (2) examine characteristics of said parking (e.g., size, access area, % of allotment to normal parking) as well as public transportation ridership usage; (3) and create new analytic metrics enabled by this approach such as such as the proximity of disabled spaces to POIs (e.g., the distance to an entrance). The overarching goal of this work is to create open datasets and analytics for ADA-accessible parking as well as to infuse this information into modern mapping tools (e.g., OpenStreetMaps).

• Record URL:
  • https://tbd.ctr.utexas.edu/research-product/disabled-parking-cv-scalable-methods-to-analyze-disability-parking-using-computer-vision-and-high-resolution-aerial-and-streetscape-images/

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $200,000.00
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552344815

  69A3552348320

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Center for Understanding Future of Travel Behavior and Demand

  University of Texas
  Austin, TX  United States 
• Project Managers:

  Bhat, Chandra

• Performing Organizations:

  University of Washington, Seattle

  Civil and Environmental Engineering Department
  201 More Hall, Box 352700
  Seattle, WA  United States  98195-2700
• Principal Investigators:

  Froehlich, Jon

• Start Date: 20240601
• Expected Completion Date: 20260531
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Aerial photography; Computer vision; Image analysis; Metrics (Quantitative assessment); Parking; Parking demand
• Identifier Terms: Americans with Disabilities Act
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Society;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01954944
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Center for Understanding Future of Travel Behavior and Demand
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552344815, 69A3552348320
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: May 13 2025 7:30PM