Perspectives on Accessibility and Travel

This paper describes how urban form, whether it is compact, multi-nodal, or sprawling, impacts they type and cost of transportation systems needed to serve residents of a metropolitan area. On the other hand, the type and location of major transportation facilities greatly influences urban form. Almost a half of century’s worth of study on the link between tow provides a solid foundation to understand some inherent interactions between land use and transportation. These interactions manifest themselves in two forms: (1) the influence of urban form on transportation systems, travel demand, and urban travel behavior; and (2) the influence of transportation systems and transportation investments on metropolitan urban form. The two phenomena share a common heritage; however each asks different questions, and they often relate to different scales of analysis. This paper attempts to describe the issues that emanate from the former question—that is, what do we know abut the manner in which land use patterns affect household travel. In doing so, the paper discusses how the relationship between urban form and transportation has historically been conceptualized and also summarizes some of the existing research. The paper then turns to describing how the history relates to new and pressing research questions that provide the impetus for studying more in depth matters related to accessibility.