Resource information
The authors combine measures of urban
form and public transit supply for 114 urbanized areas with
the 1990 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey to
address two questions: (1) How do measures of urban form,
including city shape, road density, the spatial distribution
of population, and jobs-housing balance affect the annual
miles driven and commute mode choices of U.S. households?
(2) How does the supply of public transportation (annual
route miles supplied and availability of transit stops)
affect miles driven and commute mode choice? The authors
find that jobs-housing balance, population centrality, and
rail miles supplied significantly reduce the probability of
driving to work in cities with some rail transit. Population
centrality and jobs-housing balance have a significant
impact on annual household vehicle miles traveled (VMT), as
do city shape, road density, and (in rail cities) annual
rail route miles supplied. The elasticity of VMT with
respect to each variable is small, on the order of 0.10-0.20
in absolute value. However, changing several measures of
form simultaneously can reduce annual VMT significantly.
Moving the sample households from a city with the
characteristics of Atlanta to a city with the
characteristics of Boston reduces annual VMT by 25 percent.
