Browsing by Author "Salon, Deborah"

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    Heterogeneity in the relationship between biking and the built environment
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2019) Salon, Deborah; Conway, Matthew Wigginton; Wang, Kailai; Roth, Nathaniel
    Bicycling is an environmentally friendly, healthy, and affordable mode of transportation that is viable for short-distance trips. Urban planners, public health advocates, and others are therefore looking for strategies to promote more bicycling, including improvements to the built environment that make bicycling more attractive. This study presents an analysis of how key built environment characteristics relate to bicycling frequency based on a large sample from the 2012 California Household Travel Survey (California Department of Transportation, 2012) and detailed built environment data. The built environment characteristics we explore include residential and intersection density at anchor locations (home, work, school), green space, job access, landuse mix, and bicycle infrastructure availability. Analyses are conducted separately for three distinct demographic groups: school-age children, employed adults, and adults who are not employed. The key conclusion from this work is that the relationship between bicycling and some built environment characteristics varies between types of people — most dramatically between adults and children. To develop targeted policies with scarce resources, local policymakers need specific guidance as to which investments and policy changes will be most effective for creating “bikeable” neighborhoods. Our work indicates that the answer depends — at least in part — on who these bikeable neighborhoods are meant to serve.
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    Measuring the impacts of local land-use policies on vehicle miles of travel: The case of the first big-box store in Davis, California
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2013) Lovejoy, Kristin; Sciara, Gian-Claudia; Salon, Deborah; Handy, Susan; Mokhtarian, Patricia
    Concerns over climate change have brought new impetus to the goal of reducing vehicle travel through land-use policy. To determine the degree to which land-use policies are effective in reducing vehicle travel, studies are needed that measure and compare vehicle travel both before and after a land-use policy change. The opening of the first big-box retail store in Davis, California, represented a major change in the retail landscape and an unusual opportunity to study its effect on shopping travel. Surveys of residents' shopping behavior conducted before and after the opening of the store revealed a significant shift in where people shopped and a measurable reduction in overall vehicle miles traveled (VMT) for shopping. Although the observed change in VMT is specific to the Davis context, the findings support the general proposition that bringing retail destinations closer to residences could help reduce vehicle travel, particularly where the comparable alternatives for the newly introduced store are far away. The study also offers important insights into the challenges of conducting before-and-after studies of the impact of local land-use changes.