Journal of Urban Planning and Development

Due to parallel infrastructure developments in both automobile and alternative transport systems, a modal shift from the automobile to alternative modes has not occurred at its expected level, because of people’s affection for the automobile. In this situation, the necessity of imposing a strategic and appropriate gap between demand and supply of auto-related transportation infrastructure is identified first in this paper. Secondly, several models are developed to calculate demand of auto-related road infrastructure both empirically and theoretically. After that, an index of gap between demand and supply of auto-related road infrastructure is developed, and its relations to travel behavior and land uses are analyzed. In this regard, cities are classified based on their population size and density and level of transit service. Research results show a significant relation of gap index to modal shares and land uses.

This paper examines the practically of using a single internal trip purpose to generate the production and attraction values for traffic analysis zones in small urban community travel models. In previous research efforts, Quick-Response techniques, originally developed for cities with populations between 50,000 and 199,999, have been successfully applied to perform trip generation in small urban community travel models. Focusing on the reduction of data requirements and complexity of the trip generation analysis, a single trip purpose technique, based solely on aggregate numbers of households and businesses in a traffic analysis zone, has been proposed as a method to simplify the trip generation computation and reduce data requirements. This paper presents the fundamentals of the Quick-Response and single trip purpose techniques, tests the advantage of multiple trip purposes in a small sample network, and applies the two methodologies in a small urban community within Alabama to determine if significant differences exist when performing trip generation. The paper concludes that, for smaller urban community travel models, where different trip purposes are assumed to have similar trip lengths, both the Quick-Response and the single trip purpose technique produce similar results for the total productions and attractions in a traffic analysis zone. This similarity, and the results of the test showing that different trip purposes are not vital for trip distribution in small networks, substantiate the use of the simplified single trip purpose technique for trip generation.

The objectives of this research study are to (1) determine parents’ perceptions of traffic congestion and its impacts as far as the automobile transport of children to schools, (2) identify reasons for the preference of the auto mode for school transport, and (3) estimate the likely energy and air pollution benefits of a modal shift for school transportation. The database included the result of a survey of a systematic-random sample of 1,500 heads of households interviewed at their randomly selected workplaces. A total of 1,232 completed questionnaires (82.1%) were processed for data analysis. A profile of respondents’ socioeconomic status, congestion experiences, and reasons for not using the school bus is presented. Also described is data indicating that the preference of the personal automobile for transport to school stems from households’ economic affluence/social prestige rather than inferior characteristics associated with a bus service. Estimation of air pollution impacts of school transportation shows that enormous environmental gains will be made if the demand for school transportation in Kuwait is shifted from car to bus.