Transportation-land-use interaction: empirical findings in North America, and their implications for modeling

The last two decades have witnessed the implementation of various policies based on land-use to address problems stemming from automobile ownership an d use. There are, however, questions with respect to the efficacy of such p olicies, This paper therefore reviews the literature on empirical studies o f the transportation-land-use interaction with the objective of identifying the current state of knowledge concerning the interactions, particularly w ith respect to the impact land-use policies are likely to have on the syste m. The focus is on studies conducted in North America. The results are mixe d; some studies conclude that urban densities, traditional neighborhood des ign schemes, and land-use mix have an impact on auto ownership and use, Oth er studies find the impact of such variables to be at best marginal. Gaps i n our understanding of the interaction are identified, These are found to b e primarily the result of data limitations and methodological weaknesses. A detailed discussion of the implications of the findings for the developmen t and application of integrated transportation-land-use models is provided, with the recommendation that without such an integrated approach to analyz ing the transportation-land-use interaction, any study of impacts of urban form on travel behavior is likely to yield erroneous results, (C) 2000 Else vier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.