Project Summary
This research will help close a crucial data gap in land use – travel behavior studies. Current estimates of land use – travel behavior relationships are based on average effects for metropolitan areas or larger geographies. That gives little insight into the effect of small-area land use policies such as targeted infill development, transit-oriented land uses near stations, or similarly localized policies. In California, Senate Bill (SB) 375 requires that metropolitan planning organizations incorporate land use – transportation planning, but existing travel diary surveys have very few observations in areas of policy interest. This research will pioneer methods to obtain travel data with sufficient spatial focus to inform current debates about how land use influences vehicle miles of travel. We will obtain a target of 100 to 200 travel diary surveys in small neighborhoods of high policy relevance for SB 375. We anticipate that the methods developed in this research will advance efforts toward low-cost, rapid travel data collection that can be used in before-and-after transportation program evaluations in the future.