JTLU Volume 8, No. 1 (2015)

Persistent link for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/11299/172082

Table of Contents:

Trip generation: Introduction to the special section, pp. 1-4

Adjusting ITE’s Trip Generation Handbook for urban context, pp. 5-29

Phantom trips: Overestimating the traffic impacts of new development, pp. 31-49

Large urban freight traffic generators: Opportunities for city logistics initiatives, pp. 51-67

Method to adjust Institute of Transportation Engineers vehicle trip-generation estimates in smart-growth areas, pp. 69-83

Using household travel surveys to adjust ITE trip generation rates, pp. 85-119

Introduction to special section on paratransit, pp. 121-122

From direct to trunk-and-feeder public transport services in the Urban South: Territorial implications, pp. 123-136

Toward a simulation of minibuses in South Africa, pp. 137-154

Get on the (curbside) bus: The new intercity bus, pp. 155-169

The influence of land use and mobility policy on travel behavior: A comparative case study of Flanders and the Netherlands, pp. 171-190

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Trip generation: Introduction to the special section
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2015) Handy, Susan L.
This paper introduces a set of articles about how transportation planners need better tools for estimating trip generation, and to develop better tools we need more data collection, especially methods that capture passenger trips by personal vehicles, transit, walking, and bicycling, as well as freight trips. With such data in hand, researchers would be able to develop models that both produce more accurate estimates of vehicle trips and generate trip estimates for other passenger modes and for freight. Such estimates would help to ensure adequate provision for these modes and not just for cars.
Adjusting ITE’s Trip Generation Handbook for urban context
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2015) Clifton, Kelly J.; Currans, Kristina M.; Muhs, Christopher D.
This study examines the ways in which urban context affects vehicle trip generation rates across three land uses. An intercept travel survey was administered at 78 establishments (high-turnover restaurants, convenience markets, and drinking places) in the Portland, Oregon, region during 2011. This approach was developed to adjust the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Trip Generation Handbook vehicle trip rates based on built environment characteristics where the establishments were located. A number of policy-relevant built environment measures were used to estimate a set of nine models predicting an adjustment to ITE trip rates. Each model was estimated as a single measure: activity density, number of transit corridors, number of high-frequency bus lines, employment density, lot coverage, length of bicycle facilities, presence of rail transit, retail and service employment index, and intersection density. All of these models perform similarly (Adj. R2 0.76-0.77) in estimating trip rate adjustments. Data from 34 additional sites were collected to verify the adjustments. For convenience markets and drinking places, the adjustment models were an improvement to the ITE’s handbook method, while adjustments for restaurants tended to perform similarly to those from ITE’s estimation. The approach here is useful in guiding plans and policies for a short-term improvement to the ITE’s Trip Generation Handbook. The measures are useful for communities seeking to develop local adjustments to vehicle trip rate estimates, and all could be calculated from spatial data available in most locations. The paper concludes with a discussion on what long-term improvements to the ITE’s Trip Generation Handbook might entail, with further implications in planning and practice.
Phantom trips: Overestimating the traffic impacts of new development
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2015) Millard-Ball, Adam
The Trip Generation Manual is the standard reference for assessing the impacts of new development on traffic congestion and the environment in the United States. However, a comparison to household surveys suggests that the Trip Generation Manual overestimates trips by 55 percent—likely because its data represent a biased sample of development in the U.S. Moreover, the data in the Trip Generation Manual are ill suited to many analyses of traffic impacts, development impact fees, and greenhouse gas emissions because they do not account for substitution effects. Most trips “generated” by new developments are not new, but instead involve households reshuffling trips from other destinations. These twin problems—theoretical and practical—are likely to lead to the construction of excessive roadway infrastructure and to the overestimation of the congestion, fiscal, and environmental impacts of new development.
Large urban freight traffic generators: Opportunities for city logistics initiatives
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2015) Jaller, Miguel; Wang, Xiaokun (Cara); Holguin-Veras, Jose
This paper develops procedures to identify and quantify the role played by large urban freight traffic generators as contributors of truck traffic in metropolitan areas. Although ports, container terminals, and other industrial sites are usually associated with large generations of truck trips, they only represent a small proportion of the total trips produced and attracted in large metropolitan areas. This paper analyzes the importance of other facilities such as ordinary businesses or buildings that individually or collectively (clusters) generate a large proportion of truck traffic. The paper discusses the opportunities of these large traffic generators for city logistics initiatives. In addition, the paper introduces two effective and complementary procedures to identify these generators using freight trip generation models estimated by the authors.
Method to adjust Institute of Transportation Engineers vehicle trip-generation estimates in smart-growth areas
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2015) Schneider, Robert James; Shafizadeh, Kevan; Handy, Susan L.
This paper describes a practical method of adjusting existing Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) estimates to produce more accurate estimates of motor-vehicle trip-generation at developments in smart-growth areas. Two linear regression equations, one for an A.M. peak-hour adjustment and one for a P.M. peak-hour adjustment, were developed using vehicle trip counts and easily measured site and surrounding area context variables from a sample of 50 smart-growth sites in California. Many of the contextual variables that were associated with lower vehicle trip generation at the smart-growth study sites were correlated. Therefore, variables representing characteristics such as residential population density, employment density, transit service, metered on-street parking, and building setback distance from the sidewalk were combined into a single “smart-growth factor” that was used in the linear regression equations. The A.M. peak-hour and P.M. peak-hour adjustment equations are only appropriate for planning-level analysis at sites in smart-growth areas. In addition, the method is only appropriate for single land uses in several common categories, such as office, mid- to high-density residential, restaurant, and coffee/donut shop. The method uses data from California, but the methodological approach could provide a framework for adjusting ITE trip-generation estimates in smart-growth areas throughout the United States.
Using household travel surveys to adjust ITE trip generation rates
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2015) Currans, Kristina M.; Clifton, Kelly J.
The Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Trip Generation Handbook has become the predominant method for estimating vehicle trips generated by development. The handbook is often criticized for its inability to account for multimodal behavior in urban contexts, often overestimating vehicle traffic. The purpose of this research is to develop and test a ready-to-use method for adjusting the ITE handbook vehicle trip generation estimates for urban context. This method was created using household travel surveys from Oregon, Washington, and Maryland, as well as nationally available built environment data. Three adjustments were estimated for eight general land-use categories, including a “pooled” category considering all travel survey data. The performance of three adjustments were tested using 195 establishment-level vehicle trip generation datasets compiled from three independent sources. Using this data, the performances of four land-use categories were tested. The overall findings suggest that the simplest of the three adjustments developed provided similar results to the more complex adjustment methods. Moreover, adjustments applied using the “pooled” land-uses category also provided similar results to the more detailed segmentation of travel survey data. Both of these findings punctuate the need for a simple, urban adjustment for trip generation estimates.
Introduction to special section on paratransit
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2015) King, David
Over the past few years, private taxi, jitneys, and other paratransit services have blossomed in cities around the world. Scholars have noticed. Two things stand out immediately. First, we don’t know very much about how taxi and paratransit services affect travel behavior and mode choices. Second, we know even less about who uses these systems. Because these services tend to serve niche populations, it is difficult to assess who an “average” rider is. What we do know about taxi services and paratransit is that they are important complements of—and occasional substitutes for—conventional fixed-route transit. This special section of the Journal of Transport and Land Use presents three articles in which the authors examine complementary travel modes to conventional public transit systems. Together these three papers provide evidence of how informal and nontraditional transit operates in conjunction with established transit services as well as competes with certain types of services.
From direct to trunk-and-feeder public transport services in the Urban South: Territorial implications
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2015) Ferro, Pablo Salazar; Behrens, Roger
In the Global South, many ongoing public transport improvement initiatives are based on a complete restructuring of the existing system. More often than not, plans call for an eventual absorption of incumbent operators into a new “formal” system or for a more radical eradication. These operators are often considered by city authorities to be the cause of inefficient transport systems. When implementing bus-rapid-transit-based plans, public transport improvement initiatives typically propose the transformation of paratransit-based direct services into feeder-trunk-distributor models that introduce new “formal” and “modern” modes. The move from direct services to feeder-trunk-distributor services can, however, have significant implications for travel patterns within the urban territory. Formal feeder-trunk-distributor public transport systems are more rigid than the paratransit-based model they are meant to replace. Some areas of cities in the Global South, generally located in peripheral zones, are growing and changing rapidly, and as such they ideally require a public transport system that is flexible and demand-responsive to fulfill their residents’ basic access needs. With the introduction of formal-only trunk-and-feeder schemes, some of these benefits of paratransit services are lost. Without disregarding the need for paratransit upgrade in terms of operations and business practices, it is argued that complementarity between formal and paratransit services is possible within a feeder-trunk-distributor model. Such complementarity should eventually lead to more equitable and sustainable public transport systems in cities that are changing fast and where the development of paratransit operators has, in one way or another, contributed to the inclusion of the poorest sectors of society in the city.
Towards a simulation of minibuses in South Africa
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2015) Neumann, Andreas; Röder, Daniel; Joubert, Johan W.
After private cars, minibus taxis are the most common transport mode in South Africa. Especially for low-income citizens living in townships, minibus services are often the only possibility for mobility. Despite the great importance of the mode, there is very little knowledge of routes, fares, and the number of minibuses. Hence, it is difficult to simulate and to understand the influence of this mode on other modes and on transport planning in general. This article presents the development of the first ``close-to-reality'' minibus supply model based on demand and street network only. The approach adopts the survival-of-the-fittest principle, using a co-evolutionary algorithm that is integrated into a microscopic multi-agent simulation framework. The successful application of the approach to a large-scale, real-world scenario in the Nelson Mandela Bay Area Municipality in South Africa shows that it is able to identify the main minibus corridors as well as to find robust service coverage in lower-demand areas. The resulting minibus supply model can then be used for planning purposes (e.g., to investigate aspects of strategic, operational, or regulatory changes).
Get on the (curbside) bus: The new intercity bus
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2015) Klein, Nicholas J.
Curbside buses are intercity buses that pick up and drop off on city streets and corners instead of bus terminals. These new buses have only been operating for 15 years but have quickly revitalized and transformed the intercity bus industry, leading to the first increases in ridership in 50 years. Using a passenger intercept survey of both curbside and established carriers, such as Greyhound, I address two basic questions about this new mode: Who uses curbside buses? And what is the effect of curbside buses on competing modes? The findings indicate that curbside buses appear to be attracting different passengers than established carriers. After using curbside buses, passengers are less likely to use Amtrak for intercity trips, but the buses have no effect on their likelihood to drive.
The influence of land use and mobility policy on travel behavior: A comparative case study of Flanders and the Netherlands
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2015) De Vos, Jonas
Numerous transportation studies have indicated that the local built environment can have an important effect on travel behavior; people living in suburban neighborhoods travel more by car than people living in urban neighborhoods. In this paper, however, we will analyze whether the regional land use has an important influence on travel behavior by comparing two regions with a varying land-use pattern: Flanders (Belgium) and the Netherlands. The different land-use pattern seems to have influenced travel behavior in both regions. An active spatial planning policy in the Netherlands, clustering activities in urban surroundings, appears to have realized a sustainable travel behavior, as a substantial share of residents frequently walk, cycle or use public transportation. The rather passive spatial planning in Flanders, resulting in urban sprawl, seems to stimulate car use. The applied mobility policy also has an impact on the travel behavior and land use of the Flemings and the Dutch. Infrastructure is concentrated in Dutch urban environments, whereas Flanders has a more widespread network of infrastructure and cheap public transportation, resulting in a further increase of suburbanization.