Land Use Impacts on Trip Generation Rates

Abstract

In the conventional four-step travel demand modeling process, the number of trips made by a household is modeled in terms of household size, income, and other sociodemographic variables; any effect of location, land use, or transportation service level is discounted. This is the same as discounting any effect of household accessibility to out-of-home activities as a factor in trip generation (accessibility depending on all three: location, land use, and transportation service level). In contrast to the practice of trip generation, theory tells us that trip rates must vary with accessibility, and some (not all) empirical studies have found that they do. In light of conflicting empirical studies, and the obvious need for more precise and policy-sensitive travel forecasts, this issue is revisited. The independent effects of land use and accessibility variables on household trip rates were tested for using data from Florida travel surveys. It was found that, after controlling for sociodemographic variables, residential density, mixed use, and accessibility do not have significant, independent effects on household trip rates. Conventional trip generation models, which generate person trips by vehicle (not by all modes) and do so without regard to residential location, may not be as bad as one would imagine a priori.