A Computer Methodology for Evaluating Urban Areas for Walking, Cycling and Transit Suitability: Four Case Studies from Suburban Adelaide, Australia

Metropolitan Adelaide in Australia is dominated by low-density suburbs with an extensive and large road supply, which brings with it car-dependent lifestyles that are ultimately unsustainable in the longer term. Changes are needed to make a city such as Adelaide less car-dependent towards a city that relies on more sustainable transport modes for its day to day urban travel needs. This paper presents the results from a study of travel patterns among residents of four suburban residential areas in metropolitan Adelaide. The central focus of this research is to develop a computer based research methodology that can help policy makers to create urban environments that are transit oriented and which have a greater reliance on environmentally sustainable modes of transport such as walking and cycling. Intuitively, it would seem that centrally located residences could be expected to contribute to shorter average travelling distances and a lower proportion of trips travelled by car, but this research will help determine whether this is in fact the case. Using exist datasets together with inventory data of road network and urban environment characteristics from original fieldwork, this paper examines to what extent there are correlations between various attributes of a particular urban location as they relate to travel behaviour, public transit, various household attributes, urban form, road network characteristics, degree of centralization of activities and commuting distance to metropolitan centres. An innovative and unique aspect of this research is the development of a computerized approach UATCAPS (Urban Assessment of Transit, Cycling and Pedestrian Suitability) that has been used to establish an inventory of the built environment in the case study localities that allows researchers to explore the relationships between travel behaviour and various social and environmental attributes. The findings from this research would be of interest to planners, urban and transport policy-makers wanting a research methodology that can be used to