A methodology to derive land use specific auto-trip emission footprints from household travel survey data

ABSTRACT

Regional travel-demand forecasting models are complex and cumbersome to use. Furthermore, they are also not sensitive to neighborhood level sustainable land use policies such as transit-oriented developments (TOD). There is a need for developing simple sketch planning tools and methodologies for taking measurements on the impacts of land use policies on mobility and environment. The primary objective of this research is to develop a methodology for deriving household-level emission footprints of auto travel from household travel survey data. The methodology was demonstrated by comparing and contrasting emission footprints for TOD and Non-TOD land uses in the Washington DC metropolitan area. A TOD is defined as the area encircling stations along line-haul Metrorail service. Statistical analyses indicated that Non-TOD emission footprints are significantly higher than the TOD footprints. Differences amongst pairs of TODs showed no statistical significance. Some exceptions to this generalized observation were also noted. The utility of the methodology was also demonstrated by comparing aggregate emission footprints at county level. The methodology can also be used for deriving emission footprints for any logical aggregate group of traffic analysis zones (TAZ). Thus, this research advances the utility of travel surveys to establishing baselines on emission footprints for select geographies.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable land use
• emission footprints
• Transit Oriented Developments (TOD)
• deriving emissions from travel survey data
• land use and transportation

Acknowledgments

This study is partially funded by the US Department of Transportation under the University Transportation Centres program. The authors are grateful for thorough review and valuable suggestions provided by dissertation committee members Dr. Girum Urgessa, Shanjiang Zhu, Dr. Jie Xu and Dr. Laura Kosoglu of George Mason University. The authors also express their gratitude for four anonymous reviewers whose thorough review of the manuscript and comments helped improve this paper significantly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University Transportation Centers program of FHWA.