Assessing the Impact of the Built Environment on Travel Behavior: A Case Study of Buffalo, New York

摘要

Assessing the impact of characteristics of the built environment on travel behavior can yieldvaluable tools for land use and transportation planning. Of particular interest are planning modelsthat can estimate the effects of ‘smart growth’ planning. In this paper, a post-processor methodof quantifying and searching for relationships among many aspects of travel behavior and thebuilt environment is developed and applied to the Buffalo, NY area. A wide scope of travelbehavior is examined, and over 50 variables, many of which are based on high-detail datasources, are examined for potentially quantifying the built environment. Linear modeling is thenused to develop models relating travel behavior and the built environment, which could then beapplied in a post-processor fashion to results from four-step travel models to provide somemeasure of sensitivity to built environment modifications. The study’s findings demonstrate thatmode choice is highly correlated to measures of the built environment, and that many of theprinciples of smart growth appear to be a valid way to encourage non-vehicle travel. HomebasedVHT and VMT, on the other hand, appear to be affected by the built environment to alesser degree.