Walk or Drive between Stores? Designing Neighbourhood Shopping Districts for Pedestrian Activity

Abstract

What design features are associated with people choosing to walk vs. drive between activities within shopping districts? This exploratory study used mixed-logit discrete choice modelling to analyze survey responses from 286 retail pharmacy store customers who travelled by personal automobile to one of 20 San Francisco Bay Area shopping districts, and then visited at least two activity locations within the district. The 91 customers who walked rather than drove within the shopping district tended to travel shorter distances and have several other common personal characteristics. After controlling for these factors, respondents were significantly more likely to walk when the main commercial roadway had fewer driveway crossings and a lower speed limit.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to particularly thank Carlos Velasquez and Melissa Chinchilla for assisting with intercept survey distribution, and to Robert Cervero, Elizabeth Deakin, Elizabeth Macdonald and Joan Walker for advising on this study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the US Environmental Protection Agency Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Program under Grant FP-91695101-0. Although the research described in the paper has been funded in part by the STAR Program, it has not been subjected to any EPA review and therefore does not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency, and no official endorsement should be inferred. This study was also supported by a dissertation grant from the University of California Transportation Center.