Impact of Public Transit Investment on Travel Pattern and Land Use

Transportation and land use are believed to be highly correlated and therefore indivisible from each other. Transportation improvement shapes pattern of land use. In tum, land use pattern causes changes in ways of how people travel. Because of relative lower transportation cost with easy access to automobiles, many firms and households have relocated in low-density areas. The number of automobile and the demand to travel have also increasingly dominated transportation system. This fact results in traffic congestion and environmental concerns. Due to the increasing congestion level and environmental concerns, many public transportation agencies have paid a considerable attention on the role of transportation investment as an alternative way that would discourage low density development and automobile dependency, while promoting the role of inner city. The provision of public transit has led to the belief that it would attract people who heavily rely on automobiles to shift their mode and change their choice to reside. The effectiveness of public transit investment, especially rail type, has been only addressed via survey on the characteristics of the riders who use public transit as well as who reside close to the transit stops. Yet, the role of transit investment in encouraging transit use in conjunction with type of land use is inconclusive. This research therefore attempts to explain the relationship between transportation investment as a land use policy and travel behavior of those who use public transit by considering degree of transit use. Geographic Information System (GIS) is used to capture geographic characteristics of land uses related to transit route. Then multiple regression technique is utilized to estimate the relationship of transit usage to work, household characteristics and land use patterns