Abstract

The critical link between land use and transportation is human environment relations. Measurement of the environment includes representation of the spatial opportunities available to engage in activities and the infrastructure accessed by trip makers. In this paper an experiment is reported using travel behavior data from the statewide travel survey in California and a variety of activity opportunity measures at two different levels of geographic aggregation that are the tract and the block group levels covering the entire state. Using regression models the authors find these spatial measures to be significant explanatory variables and that measures form both aggregation levels explain behavior capturing a variety of complex influences. This study is also a demonstration that land use indicators and infrastructure availability can be included in travel behavior equations used in the four step and/or activity based forecasting models with largely available data in the Census Transportation Planning Package, network data available in transportation agencies, and typical regression methods included in statistical packages. Next steps are also outlined in the paper.