How Close is Close Enough? Estimating Accurate Distance Decay Functions
for Different Purposes and Multiple Modes
Principal Investigator:
Kevin Krizek, Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs
Co-Investigator:
Ahmed El-Geneidy, Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs
Research component:
Understanding travel dimensions
and reliability
Status:
Complete
Project Summary:
Current patterns of urban and suburban development, and the automobile
dependence they encourage, are leading to increases traffic congestion
and air pollution. In response to the growing ills caused by urban sprawl,
there has been an increased interest in creating more “livable” communities
in which destinations are brought closer to the home or the workplace
(that is, meeting travel needs through land use planning). While several
reports suggest best practices for integrated land use-planning, little
research has focused on examining detailed relationships between actual
travel behavior and mean distance to various services. For example,
how far will pedestrians travel to access different types of destinations?
How reliable is the “one quarter mile assumption” that is
often bandied about? How far will bicyclists travel in order to ride
on a bicycle-only facility? How far do people drive for their common
retail needs?
To explore these questions, this research triangulates between several
data sources, including the 2001 Travel Behavior Inventory (TBI) Home
Interview Survey, a Hennepin County Survey of Trail Users, and a mail-out/mail-back
survey administered in the summer of 2005 by the Principal Investigator.
A primary goal of this research is to examine different types of destinations
and accurately and robustly estimate distance decay models for individual
(as opposed to mass) travel modes and comment on the applicability of
the model for: (a) different types of travel, and (b) different settings
in Minnesota. Novel approaches for calculating impedance functions for
pedestrian travel will be developed.
Research Report:
Access to Destinations: How Close is Close Enough? Estimating Accurate Distance Decay Functions
for Different Purposes and Multiple Modes
Michael Iacono, Kevin Krizek, Ahmed M. El-Geneidy
Report no. Mn/DOT 2008-11, Series: Access to Destinations Study
76 pages
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