Auto Trips to the Central Business District

The volume of travel originating in a given area may be predicted from the land use and economic characteristics of the area. The r elative effectiveness of various areal characteristics as predictors of one specific type of travel, the automobile trip to the central business district, are studied. Origin and destination data collected in the downtown area of Lexington, Ky., during 1952 and 1957 form the basis for a series of regression equations relating total, shopping and business-work trips to vehicle registration, population, residential density, dwelling density, vehicle density, and distance. Reliability of the predicting factor or factors is tested by using the equations derived from the 1952 data to compute 1957 trip production. Computed and actual values are then compared.