Traditional Neighborhood Development Trip Generation Study

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Traditional Neighborhood Development Trip Generation Study

A. Khattak / J. Stone

Since the beginning of the new urbanist movement, alternately referred to as Traditional Neighborhood Developments (TNDs), planners and architects have touted their neighborhood and community designs for reducing residents' reliance on the automobile by creating compact, mixed use, and pedestrianfriendly developments. However, researchers have not explicitly examined how travel behavior and traffic impacts differ in a tightly controlled comparison of conventional and traditional developments. Additionally, current forecasting models and trip generation procedures need to be tested for their applicability to these new developments. This report aims to fill that void by studying a matched-pair of neighborhoods: One conventional and one traditional. The neighborhoods are located in the chapel Hill/Carrboro area of North Carolina. Traffic counts were taken at all entrances and exits to the developments, and a detailed behavioral survey of the residents was conducted in the two neighborhoods during 2003. The results show that households in Southern Village, the TND, make about the same amount of total trips, but significantly fewer automobile trips, fewer external trips and they travel fewer miles, when compared to households in the conventional neighborhoods. However, this reduction of trips in a suburban environment does little to decrease delay at 'over-designed' intersections along major highways. Finally, ITE trip generation methods and rates are acceptable for predicting the trip generation of the study neighborhoods. The implications of these results are discussed in the report.