[Help needed] Managing Parking with the Driving Skill in GAMA 2025-06

[thomasje...@gmail.com]

Hello everyone,

 

I am currently working on an urban traffic model in GAMA, using the driving skill to simulate vehicle traffic on a road network imported from QGIS. I would like to implement parking management: allowing some car agents to leave the road and park on a predefined parking spot (point or polygon), and possibly leave the parking spot later (unparking).

 

However, I have encountered a problem:

When I change the location of a car agent to move it “off” the road (for example, setting its position on a parking spot), the following car stops completely, as if the parked car was still considered as an obstacle or a “car leader” in the lane. The driving skill continues to consider the parked car for following distance and leader calculations, which blocks the traffic behind it.

 

I have tried setting variables like current_road, current_path, etc., to nil and disabling reflexes, but the issue remains.

I would like to know:

 

1. Is there an “official” or recommended way to temporarily remove a car agent from the road network when using the driving skill, so it can park without blocking traffic?
2. Should I modify the lists of agents present on the road (agents_on, all_agents)? If so, how can I properly access and modify them?
3. Should I rather “kill” the car agent and create a new one when unparking?
4. Are there any experiences or example GAMA models managing this kind of behavior (parking/unparking with the driving skill)?

 

Thank you in advance for any feedback or suggestions.

I am happy to provide more details if needed, and I can share a code excerpt if helpful—my code is based on the code found in the models from the "Plug-in / Driving Skills" section in GAMA.

 

Best regards,
Thomas Boyer
PhD student, UMR ESPACE Nice, Université Côte d’Azur
Emc2 Project