Land Use and Built Environment

The Relationship Between Non-Motorized Mode Choice and the Local Physical Environment

Rodrı́guez, DA
Joo, J
2004

By estimating multinomial choice models, this paper examines the relationship between travel mode choice and attributes of the local physical environment such as topography, sidewalk availability, residential density, and the presence of walking and cycling paths. Data for student and staff commuters to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill are used to illustrate the relationship between mode choice and the objectively measured environmental attributes, while accounting for typical modal characteristics such as travel time, access time, and out-of-pocket cost. Results...

Spatial Choices and Excess Commuting: A Case Study of Bank Tellers in Bogota, Colombia

Rodrı́guez, DA
2004

This study uses disaggregate data from Bogotá, Colombia to examine the presumption that individuals engaging in excess commuting have satisfactorily traded commuting for other location benefits. By estimating involuntary and voluntary excess commuting, the study illustrates that deviations from the minimum commute implied by the urban spatial structure are expected due to temporal and structural constraints, even when the journey-to-work is a household’s only locational concern. Therefore, the usefulness of excess commuting estimates for informing policy choices hinging on the...

Can Neighborhood Design Encourage Physical Activity?

Rodriguez, DA
Khattak, AJ
Evenson, KR
2004

Although new urbanism continues to gain popularity worldwide, many of its effects remain unexamined. If neighborhood design can support or impede active lifestyles, we hypothesize that residents of new urbanist neighborhoods will exhibit higher levels of physical activity than residents of conventional communities. Following a quasi-experimental research design, this study evaluates physical activity patterns of residents in two distinctly designed neighborhoods, a new urbanist and a conventional suburban neighborhood in a central North Carolina community. The two neighborhoods were...

Travel Behavior in Neo-Traditional Neighborhood Developments: A Case Study in USA

Khattak, AJ
Rodriguez, D
2005
Although previous research has supported the view that neo-traditional or new urbanist designs result in more walking activity, several questions remain: Do residents of these neighborhoods substitute walking for driving trips, or do they make more trips overall? What is the role of self-selection of residents in these developments? This paper aims to address these questions by examining differences in travel behavior in a matched pair of neighborhoods (one conventional and one neo-traditional) in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, North Carolina. A detailed behavioral survey of 453 households and two...

Drive or walk? Utilitarian Trips Within a Neotraditional Neighborhood

Shay, E
Fan, Y
Rodriguez, DA
Khattak, AJ
2006

An extensive body of literature has developed on the relationship between the physical environment and travel behavior. Although many studies have found that neotraditional neighborhood development supports nonautomobile travel by providing good street connectivity, pedestrian and cycling facilities, and internal destinations, questions remain about the travel behavior of individuals within such neighborhoods. This study uses travel diaries to examine utilitarian trip-making behavior within a neotraditional neighborhood and compares total trips with mode-specific (i.e., walk and...

Can Consumer Information Tighten the Transportation/Land-Use link? A Simulation Experiment

Levine, J
Rodriguez, DA
Song, J
Weinstein, MA
2006

Where people live, work, shop, and recreate fundamentally determines their local travel options. In this study, we use an experimental research design to test how strongly the dissemination of integrated accessibility and housing information influences individuals’ residential location choices. We hypothesize that individuals who receive information about accessibility to transit and accessibility to important destinations in an area as part of each rental unit listing they see are more likely to choose to live in highaccessibility neighborhoods than are individuals who do not receive such...

Uri Avin and Daniel A. Rodriguez Discuss "The Role of Employment Subcenters in Residential Location Decisions"

Avin, U
Rodriguez, DA
2010

Uri Avin writes: The paper by Eun Joo Cho, Daniel A. Rodriguez, and Yan Song in the Fall 2008 issue of the Journal of Transport and Land Use (ąe role of employment subcenters in residential location decisions, JTLU vol. 1 no. 2) was of great interest to me both because of its intrinsic subject matter and because I spent four years working in Charlotte/Mecklenburg County on a variety of projects, starting with the 1998 integrated transit/land use plan that preceded the bond referendum. I was moved to respond to the paper from the perspective of someone familiar with the place and its...

Small Cars In Neighborhoods

Bosselmann, Peter C.
Cullinane, Daniel
Garrison, William L.
Maxey, Carl M.
1993

Focusing on neighborhood travel, this study first reviews the development of vehicles and roads suited to such travel. It then considers community development trends that might encourage or thwart the adoption and use of such vehicles. Demands for vehicles and travel patterns are then treated, followed by discussions of safety and regulation topics and cost benefit issues.

Can New Urbanism Encourage Physical Activity?: Comparing a New Urbanist Neighborhood with Conventional Suburbs

Rodriguez, DA
Khattak, AJ
Evenson, KR
2007

If neighborhood design can support or undermine active lifestyles, then residents of new urbanist neighborhoods can be expected to exhibit higher levels of physical activity than residents of conventional communities. This study compared various measures of physical activity for residents of a new urbanist neighborhood to those for a group of conventional suburban neighborhoods in central North Carolina, finding no statistically significant differences, even after adjusting for individual and household characteristics. However, we did detect differences in where people were...

Exploring Associations Between Physical Activity and Perceived and Objective Measures of the Built Environment

McGinn, AP
Evenson, KR
Herring, AH
Huston, SL
Rodriguez, DA
2007

The built environment may be responsible for making nonmotorized transportation inconvenient, resulting in declines in physical activity. However, few studies have assessed both the perceived and objectively measured environment in association with physical activity outcomes. The purpose of this study was to describe the associations between perceptions and objective measures of the built environment and their associations with leisure, walking, and transportation activity. Perception of the environment was assessed from responses to 1,270 telephone surveys conducted in Forsyth...