Land Use, Urban Design, and Nonwork Travel: Reproducing Other Urban Areas’ Empirical Test Results in Portland, Oregon

Abstract

Research on nonwork automobile trip generation and land use previously conducted by researchers is replicated for the Portland, Oregon, region. Additionally, new variables examining new urbanist arguments are incorporated. The results suggest that any links between land use and nonwork trip behavior act primarily by influencing trip costs, in terms of distances traveled and speeds achieved, rather than directly influencing the number of trips made. This analysis is consistent with the other research, suggesting that this model is not sensitive to errors that might arise due to the unique characteristics of the urban area under review.