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• 1. [Article] Contextual Influences on Trip Generation

  There is national interest in building data that expands upon the existing Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) trip generation rates to include sites located in a multi-modal context. Current ITE ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Contextual Influences on Trip Generation Author: Clifton, Kelly J., Currans, Kristina Marie, Muhs, Christopher D. Year: 2012 There is national interest in building data that expands upon the existing Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) trip generation rates to include sites located in a multi-modal context. Current ITE rates represent travel behavior for development in single lots and uses, primarily measured in low-density suburban areas. Despite evidence that a more compact urban form, access to transit and a greater mix of uses generates fewer and shorter vehicle trips, local governments are often compelled to use current ITE trip generation rates to evaluate transportation impacts and calculate transportation system development charges (TSDCs). This is due to: a) the expense of collecting local data, b) lack of alternative sources of information, c) the strong industry bias toward using ITE published rates and d) the absence of a empirically tested methodology for adjusting those rates for development occurring in different land use and transportation contexts. Compounding these challenges, cities in Oregon are required to demonstrate that planning and zoning changes will not degrade the performance of state-owned transportation facilities compared to the levels of service documented in the Regional Transportation Plan under the Oregon Transportation Planning Rule, section -0060, and Oregon Highway Plan, Policy 1.F.6. These requirements can conflict with regional policies in Metro's 2040 Growth Concept that call for development of mixed-use centers and corridors to support jobs and freight reliability, a compact urban form and leverage transportation investments such as high capacity transit. Thus, there are gaps in the understanding about how best to evaluate, mitigate and plan for growth under these conditions. This research proposes to develop multi-modal trip generation rates that better reflect the relationship between land use, transportation and travel demand for specific land use types located in various urban settings. The project aims to collect local data (using multi-modal counts and establishment surveys) on a few specific land uses (deemed most problematic to estimate demand and occurring across the spectrum of urban conditions) to develop trip generation rates that are sensitive to demographic, land use and transportation contexts. These new trip rates will be compared to the ITE rates for the same land use category and a methodology for adjusting the ITE rates will be developed. This adjustment methodology will be validated, using additional data collected in this research. The research will be documented and made available to local partners and disseminated widely to reach out to other communities across the country. The research conducted for this project would account for how the built environment (e.g., both land use and transportation) influences travel behavior (number of trips, trip length, mode choice), and determine trip rates that reflect the entire activity spectrum of different development/place typologies. This is extremely important in determining the impact of different development types on the transportation system to: 1) avoid over-planning the system for the surrounding land uses; (2) suggest strategies and investment priorities to encourage more compact, mixed-use areas with more transportation choices and 3) avoid creating regulatory and/or financial barriers to compact form envisioned by local, regional and statewide plans (i.e. uniform TSDCs can result in lower impact development paying the same rates, and thus subsidizing development with higher impact costs to the transportation system). The documentation of the findings and methodology will be applicable to current and future growth and be transferable to other communities, locally and nationally, beyond the Portland region. Title: Contextual Influences on Trip Generation Author: Clifton, Kelly J., Currans, Kristina Marie, Muhs, Christopher D. Year: 2012 There is national interest in building data that expands upon the existing Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) trip generation rates to include sites located in a multi-modal context. Current ITE rates represent travel behavior for development in single lots and uses, primarily measured in low-density suburban areas. Despite evidence that a more compact urban form, access to transit and a greater mix of uses generates fewer and shorter vehicle trips, local governments are often compelled to use current ITE trip generation rates to evaluate transportation impacts and calculate transportation system development charges (TSDCs). This is due to: a) the expense of collecting local data, b) lack of alternative sources of information, c) the strong industry bias toward using ITE published rates and d) the absence of a empirically tested methodology for adjusting those rates for development occurring in different land use and transportation contexts. Compounding these challenges, cities in Oregon are required to demonstrate that planning and zoning changes will not degrade the performance of state-owned transportation facilities compared to the levels of service documented in the Regional Transportation Plan under the Oregon Transportation Planning Rule, section -0060, and Oregon Highway Plan, Policy 1.F.6. These requirements can conflict with regional policies in Metro's 2040 Growth Concept that call for development of mixed-use centers and corridors to support jobs and freight reliability, a compact urban form and leverage transportation investments such as high capacity transit. Thus, there are gaps in the understanding about how best to evaluate, mitigate and plan for growth under these conditions. This research proposes to develop multi-modal trip generation rates that better reflect the relationship between land use, transportation and travel demand for specific land use types located in various urban settings. The project aims to collect local data (using multi-modal counts and establishment surveys) on a few specific land uses (deemed most problematic to estimate demand and occurring across the spectrum of urban conditions) to develop trip generation rates that are sensitive to demographic, land use and transportation contexts. These new trip rates will be compared to the ITE rates for the same land use category and a methodology for adjusting the ITE rates will be developed. This adjustment methodology will be validated, using additional data collected in this research. The research will be documented and made available to local partners and disseminated widely to reach out to other communities across the country. The research conducted for this project would account for how the built environment (e.g., both land use and transportation) influences travel behavior (number of trips, trip length, mode choice), and determine trip rates that reflect the entire activity spectrum of different development/place typologies. This is extremely important in determining the impact of different development types on the transportation system to: 1) avoid over-planning the system for the surrounding land uses; (2) suggest strategies and investment priorities to encourage more compact, mixed-use areas with more transportation choices and 3) avoid creating regulatory and/or financial barriers to compact form envisioned by local, regional and statewide plans (i.e. uniform TSDCs can result in lower impact development paying the same rates, and thus subsidizing development with higher impact costs to the transportation system). The documentation of the findings and methodology will be applicable to current and future growth and be transferable to other communities, locally and nationally, beyond the Portland region. Close

• 2. [Article] The Importance of Housing, Accessibility, and Transport Characteristic Ratings on Stated Neighborhood Preference

  Travel demand models commonly lack the ability to understand how changing residential preferences influence future housing, land use, and transportation policies. As communities struggle to address social ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: The Importance of Housing, Accessibility, and Transport Characteristic Ratings on Stated Neighborhood Preference Author: Currans, Kristina Marie Year: 2016 Travel demand models commonly lack the ability to understand how changing residential preferences influence future housing, land use, and transportation policies. As communities struggle to address social challenges related to increased economic uncertainty, transportation and land use planning have become increasingly centered on assumptions concerning the market for residential environments and travel choices. In response, an added importance has been placed on the development of toolkits capable of providing robust and flexible models to aid in understanding how differing assumptions contribute to a set of planning scenarios and how future residential location decisions may be made. In this study, we aim to examine the ability for current land use and transportation models to adequately account for the mechanism that drive households to prefer different neighborhoods based on typical transportation modeling methods. In particular, we conduct an original stated preference survey to identify the characteristics and preferences of individuals and households that influence unconstrained residential neighborhood preferences. Our objectives are to (a) determine the key drivers of residential neighborhood preferences, (b) test the contribution of sociodemographic and economic household characteristics commonly used in regional modeling tools to allocate households regionally across neighborhoods (e.g. household size, income, age, tenure), and (c) identify the preference profiles that can improve the sensitivity of our regional and statewide transportation-land use models to residential neighborhood preferences. The presentation for this seminar was done jointly with Steven Gehrke. It can be accessed at http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/18234. Title: The Importance of Housing, Accessibility, and Transport Characteristic Ratings on Stated Neighborhood Preference Author: Currans, Kristina Marie Year: 2016 Travel demand models commonly lack the ability to understand how changing residential preferences influence future housing, land use, and transportation policies. As communities struggle to address social challenges related to increased economic uncertainty, transportation and land use planning have become increasingly centered on assumptions concerning the market for residential environments and travel choices. In response, an added importance has been placed on the development of toolkits capable of providing robust and flexible models to aid in understanding how differing assumptions contribute to a set of planning scenarios and how future residential location decisions may be made. In this study, we aim to examine the ability for current land use and transportation models to adequately account for the mechanism that drive households to prefer different neighborhoods based on typical transportation modeling methods. In particular, we conduct an original stated preference survey to identify the characteristics and preferences of individuals and households that influence unconstrained residential neighborhood preferences. Our objectives are to (a) determine the key drivers of residential neighborhood preferences, (b) test the contribution of sociodemographic and economic household characteristics commonly used in regional modeling tools to allocate households regionally across neighborhoods (e.g. household size, income, age, tenure), and (c) identify the preference profiles that can improve the sensitivity of our regional and statewide transportation-land use models to residential neighborhood preferences. The presentation for this seminar was done jointly with Steven Gehrke. It can be accessed at http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/18234. Close

• 3. [Article] Improving Trip Generation Methods for Livable Communities

  Recent efforts to improve trip generation data available for transportation impact analysis of new development include the collection of multimodal trip generation data, development of models that account ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Improving Trip Generation Methods for Livable Communities Author: Clifton, Kelly J., Larco, Nico, Currans, Kristina Marie, Wettach-Glosser, Jael Year: 2017 Recent efforts to improve trip generation data available for transportation impact analysis of new development include the collection of multimodal trip generation data, development of models that account for the built environment, and new recommendations for practice. Building on a long line of research on transportation and built environment, many studies have identified important features of the surrounding built environment that most impact trip rates and mode shares, building on a long line of research on transportation and the built environment. Despite these improvements in data and methods, less attention is placed on identifying the conditions of the site itself and the immediate surrounding environment that influence trip generation and mode choice. To fill this gap, this study builds upon previous work (Contextual Influences on Trip Generation (Project Number: OTREC 2011-407), 2012), re-examines the information collected in that study, and includes new site-level observations. The objective of this study is to examine establishment multimodal trip generation more closely from a finer-grained scale and identify site-level attributes of the built environment that help explain multimodal trip generation. From this, we have the additional objective of developing a framework for trip generation analysis that takes findings from this study into consideration. We placed emphasis on those sites in our previous study with a discord between the expected travel patterns, based upon the larger urban context and built environment of the site, and the observed. The research approach will make use of mixed methods. In addition to using archived data from the previous study, site visits provided direct observation of the overall performance of the site, including travel patterns on and around the site as well as specific site configuration, urban design details and traffic operations. The analysis of this combination of data provided a more complete picture of site-level trip generation and our findings highlight the influence of: people living nearby and using the site; the nature of the land use on the site; the development along arterial roadways; site permeability and access; and the local culture around walking and cycling. Finally, this report ends by reflecting on the numerous concerns identified from practice, the research findings from various recent studies, and the need for a sustainable process for evaluating the transportation impacts of new land development. We present a potential framework to advance the methods for how site plans fit into neighborhood and regional planning, using locally defined standards and goals. Here, we de-emphasize the site and its immediate environs as the primary (and only) scale of analysis and lessen the reliance on the problematic methodologies for estimating site-level travel demand. Rather, we argue that transportation impact analysis would benefit by first taking a district, neighborhood or area-wide approach with attention to the urban context—the built and social environment—where a site is located. At this larger scale, there is a better ability to understand the various elements that work together to shape travel demand and allows for a better assessment of how a specific site proposal will integrate into this larger context. This effort involves several faculty from across the country, including Kelly Clifton (PSU Engineering) and Nico Larco (UO Architecture) from our consortium and Susan Handy (UC Davis Environmental Studies) and Robert Schneider (UW Milwaukee Planning) as consultants/advisors. Title: Improving Trip Generation Methods for Livable Communities Author: Clifton, Kelly J., Larco, Nico, Currans, Kristina Marie, Wettach-Glosser, Jael Year: 2017 Recent efforts to improve trip generation data available for transportation impact analysis of new development include the collection of multimodal trip generation data, development of models that account for the built environment, and new recommendations for practice. Building on a long line of research on transportation and built environment, many studies have identified important features of the surrounding built environment that most impact trip rates and mode shares, building on a long line of research on transportation and the built environment. Despite these improvements in data and methods, less attention is placed on identifying the conditions of the site itself and the immediate surrounding environment that influence trip generation and mode choice. To fill this gap, this study builds upon previous work (Contextual Influences on Trip Generation (Project Number: OTREC 2011-407), 2012), re-examines the information collected in that study, and includes new site-level observations. The objective of this study is to examine establishment multimodal trip generation more closely from a finer-grained scale and identify site-level attributes of the built environment that help explain multimodal trip generation. From this, we have the additional objective of developing a framework for trip generation analysis that takes findings from this study into consideration. We placed emphasis on those sites in our previous study with a discord between the expected travel patterns, based upon the larger urban context and built environment of the site, and the observed. The research approach will make use of mixed methods. In addition to using archived data from the previous study, site visits provided direct observation of the overall performance of the site, including travel patterns on and around the site as well as specific site configuration, urban design details and traffic operations. The analysis of this combination of data provided a more complete picture of site-level trip generation and our findings highlight the influence of: people living nearby and using the site; the nature of the land use on the site; the development along arterial roadways; site permeability and access; and the local culture around walking and cycling. Finally, this report ends by reflecting on the numerous concerns identified from practice, the research findings from various recent studies, and the need for a sustainable process for evaluating the transportation impacts of new land development. We present a potential framework to advance the methods for how site plans fit into neighborhood and regional planning, using locally defined standards and goals. Here, we de-emphasize the site and its immediate environs as the primary (and only) scale of analysis and lessen the reliance on the problematic methodologies for estimating site-level travel demand. Rather, we argue that transportation impact analysis would benefit by first taking a district, neighborhood or area-wide approach with attention to the urban context—the built and social environment—where a site is located. At this larger scale, there is a better ability to understand the various elements that work together to shape travel demand and allows for a better assessment of how a specific site proposal will integrate into this larger context. This effort involves several faculty from across the country, including Kelly Clifton (PSU Engineering) and Nico Larco (UO Architecture) from our consortium and Susan Handy (UC Davis Environmental Studies) and Robert Schneider (UW Milwaukee Planning) as consultants/advisors. Close