By Kaid Benfield
Senior Counsel for Environmental Strategies, Placemakers LLC
Huffington Post
It makes intuitive sense that people living or working in walkable, in-town locations would not need to drive as often, or as far, as those in areas where things are farther apart. Some destinations - the dry cleaner’s, maybe, or a restaurant - may be within walking distance and not require a vehicle trip at all; others, such as a downtown job, may be accessible by transit service that is more frequent and convenient than typically found in spread-out locations; and trips that are necessarily or more conveniently taken by car may not require trips that are lengthy.
The result, in professional transportation lingo, is that development in more urban locations is unlikely to “generate” as much motor vehicle travel as does development in suburban and rural locations. And we don’t have to rely on intuition alone to know this. In a massive “meta-analysis” (a study of studies) that I still consider to be the definitive study of how land use affects travel behavior, Professors Reid Ewing (University of Utah) and Robert Cervero (UC-Berkeley) found that the more centrally located a given residence, the fewer vehicle miles traveled from that residence. The better connected a neighborhood and the more convenient it is to walkable destinations, the more trips are taken by walking rather than by driving.
These findings are consistent with a wealth of transportation research finding, for example, that transit corridors reduce traffic and increase walking; that development close to transit generates far fewer driving trips than would otherwise be expected; and that development consistent with the location and design standards of the green rating system LEED for Neighborhood Development reduces driving.
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