STATED PREFERENCE ANALYSIS OF SENSITIVITIES TO ELEMENTS OF TRANSPORTATION AND URBAN FORM
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Date
2001
Subject Area
operations - traffic, infrastructure - vehicle, land use - planning, ridership - commuting, ridership - attitudes, place - urban, mode - pedestrian
Keywords
Work trips, Walking, Urban transportation, Urban development, Travel time, Transportation planning, Traffic noise, Taxes, Stated preferences, Shopping trips, School trips, Motor vehicle noise, Mental attitudes, Logits, Logit models, Land use planning, Journey to work, Journey time, Intracity transportation, Housings, Households, Highway noise, Highway classification, Edmonton (Canada), Costs, Choice models, Attitudes, Air quality
Abstract
A total of 1,277 randomly selected households in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, were successfully interviewed concerning their attitudes to a range of elements of urban form and transportation. These elements included times and costs for trips to work and shopping by automobile and transit, taxes, air quality, traffic noise, walking conditions to local schools, street type in front of dwelling, and housing type. A stated preference technique was used, in which each respondent was asked to rank in order of preference a set of hypothetical future alternatives involving the elements. Additional direct questions were then asked about the influences of the elements in the ranking process. Logit choice analysis was used to establish the relative importance of each element for the "typical" household represented by the full sample and for various groups in the population represented by different subsamples. Overall, it was found that housing type is the most important of the elements considered, followed by municipal taxes, air quality, and traffic noise. Also, among many other things, there is less sensitivity to money spent for travel than to money paid for taxes. These indications, together with the various specific tradeoff rates that were obtained, provided useful guidance in the development of a new transportation master plan. They can also support a more formal evaluation system that reflects the sensitivities of different groups of households regarding a wide range of elements of concern to transportation and urban planners. The techniques used are flexible and could be used to consider various other elements of concern in different contexts.
Recommended Citation
Hunt, John. (2001). STATED PREFERENCE ANALYSIS OF SENSITIVITIES TO ELEMENTS OF TRANSPORTATION AND URBAN FORM. Transportation Research Record, Vol. 1780, p. 76-86.
