A Technical Review of Urban Land Use: Transportation Models as Tools for Evaluating Vehicle Travel Reduction Strategies

Climate Change Clearinghousehttps://doi.org/10.2172/1306031995PDFTech ReportSouthworth, FrankOak Ridge National LaboratoryUnited States. Department of Energy. Office of Environmental Analysis and Sustainable DevelopmentMartin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc.Oak Ridge National LaboratoryUnited StatesLand useUrban areasMathematical modelsTravelTrip lengthTrip generationPollutantsUrban transportationTransportation planningLand use planningLand use modelsPolicy analysisTraffic congestionGreenhouse gasesClimate changeORNL-6881The continued growth of highway traffic in the United States has led to unwanted urban traffic congestion as well as to noticeable urban air quality problems. These problems include emissions covered by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) and 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), as well as carbon dioxide and related "greenhouse gas" emissions. Urban travel also creates a major demand for oil. Therefore, for economic as well as environmental reasons, transportation planning agencies at both the state and metropolitan area level are focusing a good deal of attention on urban travel reduction policies. The purpose of this review is to evaluate the ability of current analytic methods and models to support both the evaluation and possibly the design of such vehicle travel reduction strategies, including those strategies involving reorganization and use of urban land. The review is divided into three sections. Section 1 describes the nature of the problem we are trying to model, Section 2 reviews the state of the art in operational urban land use/transportation simulation models, and Section 3 provides a critical assessment of such models as useful urban transportation planning tools.120