Urban Form and Vehicular Travel: Some Empirical Findings

This paper presents some empirical findings concerning the relationship between urban form and work trip commuting efficiency. drawn from the analysis of1986 work trip commuting patterns in the Greater Toronto Area. "Work trip commuting efficiency" is measured in terms of the average number of vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) per worker in a given zone. Preliminary findings include: VKT per worker increases as one moves away from both the central core of the city and from other high density employment centers within the region; ''job-housing'' balance, per se, shows little impact on commuting VKT; and population density. in and of itself, does not explain variations on commuting VKT once other urban structure variables have been accounted for