A California Statewide Exploratory Analysis Correlating Land Use Density, Infrastructure Supply and Travel Behavior

In this paper land use densities by type of employment and infrastructure supply are used together with social and demographic characteristics to explain non-motorized travel, transit use, and solo driving in California. The land use database, the highway network database, and the travel survey used for the analysis here covers the entire state of Califonia. Land use and infrastructure have a significant, substantial, and very different role for each behavior indicator used here. They alternate in significance and importance depending on the specific behavior analyzed. We also performed experiments to identify the appropriate geographical aggregation by comparing US Census tract vs US Census block group based land use densities and infrastructure densities. Regression models gave us mixed results leading us to suggest the use of a combination between the two geographies. Next steps are also outlined in the paper. Version July 8, 2008 Paper submitted for presentation at the 2009 TRB 88 Annual Meeting and Publication in the Transportation Research Record