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July 2006
Research Conference Coverage
Access to Destinations research under way
During a session on the multipart Access to Destinations study, civil engineering associate professor David Levinson, a CTS faculty scholar, discussed the importance of being accessible.
“Accessibility is one of the key factors to explain why cities form,” Levinson said. He described accessibility as a measure that relates the transportation network to the pattern of activities that comprise land use, and as a way to measure the ease of reaching valued destinations. In addition, he introduced the cumulative-opportunity measure, the gravity-based measure, and the place-rank measure as ways to measure accessibility.
Levinson went on to detail the effects of accessibility on individuals, as reflected in home sale values, and on public agencies such as the Minnesota Department of Transportation, evident by studying accessibility over time versus congestion. During the 1990s, for example, density grew faster than congestion. Per passenger delay during morning peak travel increased from 19 hours in 1990 to 43 hours in 2000. Accessibility to residents from downtown Minneapolis grew from 1,870,534 in 1990 to 2,207,639 in 2000.
According to Levinson, accessibility promises to be a useful tool for monitoring the land use and transportation system, and for assessing and valuing the benefits of proposed changes to either land use or networks. He added that his research is intended for engineers, planners, administrators, decision makers, and the public.
Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs researcher Gary Barnes, a CTS research scholar, also presented his study of the change in daily personal travel time in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area between 1990 and 2001. The research project examined the relationship between commute and non-commute travel time, as well as the relationship between mode choice, total daily travel time, and automobile travel time.
During the 1990s, Barnes said, average Twin Cities one-way commute durations increased by about two minutes, while total daily travel time increased by about five minutes for workers and two minutes for non-workers. This supports an earlier finding that variations in total daily travel time within the region were primarily due to differences in average commute durations rather than non-work travel.
For more about the Access to Destinations program, please visit www.cts.umn.edu/access-study.