Quantifying Spatial Characteristics for Travel Behavior Models

Abstract

Land use initiatives represent a potentially effective tool for coping with the kinds of mobility patterns that North American cities face in the 1990s and in the coming century. As fine-grained data about land use and travel activity become available, they provide the opportunity to improve the understanding of the linkage between land use and transportation. The neighborhood characteristics that could affect travel behavior on the non-work tour are examined in detail. Neighborhood characteristics include land use, network, and accessibility-related characteristics quantified through the use of a geographic information system. Ultimately, such measures could be used in conjunction with detailed surveys of travel behavior to specify, calibrate, and use models of modal choice and trip type that are more sensitive to the fine-grained spatial structure of neighborhoods and transportation corridors in metropolitan areas. Microlevel data for the Boston metropolitan area, together with a 1991 activity survey of approximately 10,000 residents, provide a rich empirical basis for experimenting with relevant neighborhood measures and for simulating their effects on travel behavior. Spatial characteristics affect travel behavior even on the relatively (spatially) restricted nonwork tour and could be potentially useful for transportation planning.

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