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A park-and-ride bus in Exeter.

A "park and ride" bus at the bus stop at the side of the main car park of the War Memorial Park in Coventry, England.

Park and ride facilities are public transport stations that allow commuters to leave their personal vehicles in a car park and transfer to a bus, rail system (rapid transit, light rail or commuter rail) or carpool for the rest of their trip. The vehicle is stored in the lot during the day and retrieved when the commuter returns. Park and rides are generally located in the suburbs of metropolitan areas or on the outer edges of large cities.

A road sign for park and ride.

A park-and-ride carpark in Oxford seen from a park-and-ride bus.

Partly because of the concentration of riders, these terminals often have express transit service, with a limited number of stops and often taking a faster route if available, such as a high-occupancy vehicle lane. The service may only take passengers in one direction in the morning (typically toward a central business district) and in the opposite direction in the evening, with no or a limited number of trips available in the middle of the day. It is often not allowed to park at these locations overnight. Overall, these attributes vary from region to region.

Park and ride schemes are often marketed as a way to avoid the difficulties and cost of parking within the city center. Park and ride lots allow commuters to avoid the stress of driving a congested part their journey and/or facing scarce, expensive downtown parking. It is hoped that the lots will reduce both of these problems by making it easier for people to take the bus or train into town. Sometimes, even these lots become too busy, and people sometimes organize to carpool to the station to combat crowding.

Some railway stations are promoted as a park and ride facility for a distant town, for instance Liskeard railway station for Looe, and Lelant Saltings railway station for St Ives, both in Cornwall, England. These train services are generally less frequent than would be expected of a Park and ride bus service. As of 2005, Norwich has the biggest Park & Ride in the UK, operating from six separate sites around the city.^[1] Train stations in the UK that are situated outside of the main urban area are often suffixed with Parkway, such as Bristol Parkway, Tiverton Parkway, and Didcot Parkway.

In the United States it is common for outlying rail stations to include automobile parking, often hundreds of spaces. Boston, for example, has built several large parking facilities at its commuter rail and metro stations near major highways and large arterial surface roads around the periphery of the city: Alewife, Braintree, Forest Hills, Hyde Park, Quincy Adams, Riverside, Route 128, Wellington, Woburn. The local transit operator, the MBTA, has almost 46000 park and ride spaces.

Park and rides are ideally suited for alternative fuel vehicles, which often have reduced range. In addition, some transit operators use park and ride facilities to encourage more efficient driving practices by reserving parking spaces for low emission designs, high occupancy vehicles, or carsharing.

Kiss and ride sign at a MARTA station

Kiss and ride at Alewife near Boston.

Many train stations and airports with good road connections include a separate area where cars can discharge passengers in the morning and pick them up in the evening, allowing the driver (most often a spouse and possibly after a kiss, hence the name) to quickly return to the highway.

Some high-speed railway stations in Taiwan have signs outside stations reading Kiss and Ride in English, with Chinese characters above the words that read "temporary pick up and drop off zone". Most people in Taiwan have no idea what the colloquialism means.^[2]

The term first appeared in a January 20, 1956, Associated Press report published in the Los Angeles Times.^{[citation needed]}

1. ^ Norfolk County Council (2005-04-04). Coming soon - new look Norwich Park & Ride. Press release. Retrieved on 2007-11-01.
2. ^ ""Kiss and ride" signs stump Taiwan rail passengers", Reuters, 2007-02-05. Retrieved on 2007-09-27.