An agent-based model of the influence of neighbourhood design on daily trip patterns

Post-war suburban neighbourhoods are often criticised for promoting automobile use and leading to problems such as traffic congestion, air pollution, automobile reliance, limited transit access and reduced social interactions. Newer designs, such as the neo-traditional and fused grid designs, aim to ameliorate these problems. But neighbourhood trip and traffic patterns are the collective outcome of individual decisions. Such phenomena often cannot be adequately explained by traditional aggregated methods. With consideration of personal characteristics, preferences and feedbacks between pedestrian and automobile traffic, an agent-based trip and traffic simulation model was developed and calibrated based on data from Ottawa, Ontario. Experiments show that the neo-traditional and fused grid designs generally provide more pedestrian benefits such as fewer crossings, shorter facility-access distance, less emission exposure and more social interaction opportunities, but these benefits also depend on the implementation such as the location of pedestrian-only routes. The influences are often complex. For example, elimination of pedestrian-only routes may lead to more social opportunities, but also much higher emission exposure. The study shows the importance of complex system based study of urban and neighbourhood designs, and the promise of a meso-level approach to urban and transportation simulation that can improve planning outcomes.