Abstract: Regional land use–transportation scenario planning emerged as a planning technique in U.S. metropolitan areas in the 1990s. Building on prior work by this research team, this study continues to track the development and expansion of regional scenario planning, using 28 projects completed between 2003 and 2010. These projects demonstrate the continued popularity of scenario planning techniques when used to articulate and evaluate compact alternatives for future growth. The research team used hierarchical multivariate modeling to evaluate 107 scenarios, demonstrating important associations between land use and transportation variables and vehicle travel demand. Coefficients from this analysis suggest that a shift to compact development—increasing average regional density by 50 percent by 2050, emphasizing infill, mixing land uses, and increasing the price of automobile use—could result in 25% fewer vehicle miles of travel (VMT) compared to amounts projected under trend conditions. The projects also demonstrate important methods for effectively integrating scenario techniques into traditional long-range regional transportation planning processes. These important advances in regional scenario practice are hampered, to some degree, by continued limitations in the ability of travel demand models to evaluate the impacts of land use-based strategies. Another limitation is the failure by project sponsors to incorporate important changes in global economic and environmental conditions, such as climate change and peak oil, both as input variables and as evaluation metrics.
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 3
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