The use of activity-based modeling to analyze the effect of land-use policies on travel behavior

This paper suggests that in order to analyze the effect of land-use policies on travel behavior an integrated framework that extend travel activity-based models to include various land-use issues such as residential location and work place should be developed and use. The importance of analyzing various land-use policies on travel behavior is continuously increasing as various policies such as transit-oriented developments, mixed land-use, different concentrations schemes, and more broadly Smart Growth, are often suggested as a means to mitigate transportation problems. Given our limited understanding of the effects of the various land-use polices on travel behavior it is imported to develop better approaches to analyze such policies. Activity-based models, that treat travel as a derivation of the demand for personal activities, provides an opportunity to better understand travel behavior as the explicit modeling of activities and the consequent tours and trips enable a more credible analysis of responses to policies and their effect on traffic and air quality. The theoretical framework of activity-based models starts with urban and land-use development as inputs; however, there is a need to translate this framework to analyze specific land-use policies. This paper discusses the advantages and potential of activity-based models for analyzing the effect of land-use policies on travel behavior. It suggests improvements that will extend the general framework to achieve a better understanding of travelers’ responses to various land-use policies and shows its advantages over tip-based models, which simply do not have such capabilities. The improved activity-based approach is illustrated through a case study based on the Portland activity-based model combined with a stated-preference residential choice model. A package of land-use policies— including improved land-use, school quality, safety, and transit service in the city center—is introduced, and its effect on household redistribution and regional travel is tested using this integrated framework. The results of this case study show that the effects of the land-use policies introduced had only marginal effects on regional travel.