Promoting Transportation Sustainability by Utilizing Available Roadway Capacity

Abstract

Land use changes affect travel demand, resulting in the need to expand transportation infrastructure. Unfortunately, an inevitable consequence of urban sprawl, the spreading of a city to suburbs and outskirts, is the creation of auto-dependent development. Land use models forecast without considering underutilized roadways leading to urban sprawl. Any change in travel cost or detrimental growth pattern does not have any significant influence on future land use or location choice of future household and employment. This study addresses urban sprawl and available capacity utilization and combines those features with land use change model for planning more compact cities. This research conducted a rigorous step by step analysis to determine a better solution that results in more trips inside a case study community. Based on minimizing vehicle mileage traveled (VMT) and the number of congested links, a preferred scenario was identified that is one of the major contributions of this exploration. Hence, it is a preliminary initiative to promote transportation sustainability and build compact cities using current resources instead of the planning of future road network solely depending on the land use forecast model. 518Current Urban Studies use model feedback to travel demand models facilitates the interaction between them based on different proposed scenarios. However, even an integrated land use/transportation model, can overlook underutilized roadways in a community and lead to urban sprawl. Therefore, any change in travel cost or detrimental

Is urban sprawl a threat to sustainable development? A review of characteristics and consequences

“…Lack of mixed development in urban sprawl cause longer and more frequent travel that eventually would inevitably create private transport dependency. Private transport dependency can further trigger traffic congestions, traffic delays, increased accident risk, and increased vehicle miles travel (Khan et al, 2018). Higher degree of sprawl would have tendency of more than one passenger vehicles to meet with transportation vis-à-vis trip needs.…”

“…Higher degree of sprawl would have tendency of more than one passenger vehicles to meet with transportation vis-à-vis trip needs. A study of transportation sustainability in Huntsville, Alabama by Khan et al, (2018), discovers that urban sprawl creates private transport dependency, quoting land use models forecast without considering underutilized roadways causing urban sprawl. A sustainable transportation only can be achieved if potentially urban expansion forms a polycentric pattern with moderate densities and continuous land development, except for open spaces.…”