01516674

Component

Public policy in the United States is increasingly focused on fostering sustainable communities by considering how transportation, housing, economic development, and environmental quality interrelate. In response to this new approach to evaluating the effectiveness of transportation, various indicators and metrics are emerging to quantify how different places are performing with respect to transportation sustainability. One challenge related to using these new indicators is that there is a tremendous amount of variation in base conditions that makes comparisons between places difficult. Accordingly, in this paper, the authors assess transportation sustainability indicators with respect to the base conditions of land use. To do so, the authors develop a methodology that identifies places that are the most similar based on degree of urbanization. The authors define degree of urbanization based on the density and distribution of population in cities, towns, suburbs, and rural areas; and they use principal component analysis and hierarchical clustering of these data in their empirical analysis. The authors compare the groups that emerge from the analysis with respect to transportation patterns and representative indicators of transportation sustainability. This methodology is applied at the statewide level, and the authors' findings suggest that more urbanized states tend to perform better with respect to transportation sustainability. Within each group, states with less vehicle use generally perform better as well. Overall, the places with the highest degree of transportation sustainability reap a range of environmental, social, and economic benefits. This contrasts with the conventional understanding that advances in one area of sustainability require a trade-off in another.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADD40 Transportation and Sustainability. Alternate title: Using a Degree of Urbanism to Compare How States Perform with Respect to Transportation Sustainability.

01503729

14-2336

English

21p

2014

Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Maps; References; Tables

Land use; States; Sustainable transportation; Urbanization

Hierarchical clustering; Principal component analysis

United States

Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2014 Paper #14-2336

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 27 2014 2:49PM