01632205

Component

The travel behavior of young adults, including their preference for multimodality and lower vehicle miles traveled, has drawn significant attention in the transportation literature. Some studies argue that a new pattern of residential location choice among young adults is one of the reasons behind these observed travel behavior—that a “back-to-the-city” movement is making young adults to increasingly move to denser places. Others argue that many young adults are still moving out to the suburbs than the other way around. This study aims to examine the migration trend of young adults and the factors that influence these trends through a statistical model using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The migration trend analysis and the model results confirm that young adults have a different location choice pattern as compared to older adults. The authors find a pattern favoring central cities for the youngest adults, while the trend for the older groups has remained in favor of suburban locations. This movement has transportation implications for many central cities which should stand ready to offer transit and non-motorized alternatives to this subset of the population and also use such alternatives as a way of attracting more young adults.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10 Standing Committee on Traveler Behavior and Values.

01618707

17-06406

English

16p

2017

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Cities; Migration; Public transit; Residential location; Suburbs; Trend (Statistics); Young adults

Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Policy; Public Transportation

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-06406

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 8 2016 12:36PM