Assessing the Impact of the Built Environment on Travel Behavior: A Case Study of Buffalo, New York

Assessing the impact of characteristics of the built environment on travel behavior can yield valuable tools for land use and transportation planning. Of particular interest are planning models that can estimate the effects of planning. In this paper, a post-processor method of quantifying and searching for relationships among many aspects of travel behavior and the built environment is developed and applied to the Buffalo, NY area. A wide scope of travel behavior is examined, and over 50 variables, many of which are based on high-detail data sources, are examined for potentially quantifying the built environment. Linear modeling is then used to develop models relating travel behavior and the built environment, which could then be applied in a post-processor fashion to results from four-step travel models to provide some measure of sensitivity to built environment modifications. The study's findings demonstrate that mode choice is highly correlated to measures of the built environment, and that many of the principles of smart growth appear to be a valid way to encourage non-vehicle travel. Home-based vehicle hours of travel (VHT) and vehicle miles of travel (VMT), on the other hand, appear to be affected by the built environment to a lesser degree.