Major Land Use Impacts on Transportation Term Paper

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2. Abstract

This discourse explores various land use factors that affect transportation including density, roadway connectivity, mix, regional accessibility, and density. The information derived from this study will be helpful in informing smart growth, land access management, urbanization, and assist in the realization of progressive land planning objectives like the reduction of emissions, conservation of energy, and customer savings.

3. Introduction

Land use can also be referred to as spatial planning, urban geography, urban form, community design, and development (Litman, 2011). These terms essentially refer to the manner in which the surface of the earth is used including design, type, and location of the human development. The patterns of land use can have profound environmental, social, and economic impacts. An example is where some patterns of land use make it more accessible therefore requiring little physical movement in order to get to common land destinations (Litman, 2011). With accessibility the development costs are reduced. Some areas have better accessibility for people who are not driving and hence are more beneficial for the disadvantaged people. Some land use tendencies preserve more of the green ecological spaces hence making the environment more eco-friendly.

The planning of transportation is likely to directly impact land use. This is because it will affect the size of land applied directly for transportation and indirectly for the land used to enable accessibility. For instance the expansion of highways and freeways can increase the pavement space. Likewise enhancing automobile’s ability to access the fringe areas in urban centers will encourage dispersion of development for automobile ease of access to the urban are (referred commonly as sprawl). The improvement of public transit encourages more infill and compact development otherwise referred to as smart growth.

4. Report

In the past century land use and transportation planning practices were designed to reinforce and encourage increased use and dependency of automobiles and the sprawl.

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Figure 1 below illustrates that (Litman, 2009). The practice was not intended to be that way. It revealed that there was laxity or absence of expertise in understanding the full impact that the decisions had. For instance, when making a decision on the size of parking required for a given land use category, the transport engineers then may not have thought deeply about the extra sprawl likely to result from the generous allocation of land for transport use alone. The primary goal was the convenience of motorists (Litman, 2009). Perhaps the low population levels and ample land spaces made it unnecessary to use land sparingly. Planning decisions affecting the quality of transit service, roadway supply or the user fees for the roads decisions often disregarded the impact that different land uses had.

Although many factors in land use have moderate impact individually in the sense that each decision only affects a small percentage of the total transportation system, the small decisions have synergetic and cumulative effect. Having a smart and integrated growth program will yield community designs can help alleviate ownership of vehicles and reduce travel by between 20 percent and 40 per cent (Litman, 2009). This will fundamentally increase cycling, public transit, and walking end perhaps a greater impact if it is collaborated with other changes in policies like the improvement of the public transit system and better efficiency in transport pricing.

It is important to take good care during evaluation of the impact that definite factors of land use has. The impact may vary subject to the geographic analysis, definitions, perspective, analysis time scale, and defined conditions like the demographics (Litman, 2018). Many of the factors can only be applicable to the total travel subset like the commute travel and local errands. Population density is often given the most attention in transportation….....

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