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ABSTRACT
Planners and researchers increasingly are concerned with how residential environments relate to auto ownership and travel. We quantified accessibility and walkability, to examine relationships of trips and modes to auto ownership and residential location. We applied the results in travel demand modeling for various scenarios, including a recent forecast linking land use and demographic changes, travel behavior, emissions and air quality. We found that where the built environment rates high on such measures as density, connectivity, pedestrian and transit facilities, and other features of highly walkable and accessible areas, people own fewer vehicles but make more trips. Although such environments also are associated with greater likelihood of walking and attendant decreases in motorized modes, driving remains overwhelmingly dominant.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thank staff from Charlotte and Mecklenburg County agencies for assistance with data and useful feedback on environmental representations, and Yan Song and Bev Wilson (UNC-CH) for providing results of factor and cluster analysis. Yingling Fan provided useful comments. Partial funding for this work came from EPA grant 2004-STAR-B1.
Notes
Note. Bold face denotes significance at p < 0.050; range of factor scores (units): walkability—9.65; accessibility—8.46; agglom—8.49; industry—9.25; propertyval—2.48.