Many jurisdictions are establishing vehicle travel reduction targets and how transportation agencies can help achieve those goals. Vehicle travel reduction targets represent a shift from mobility-based planning, which assumes that the goal is to maximize traffic speeds, to accessibility-based planning which strives to minimize the amount of travel required to access services and activities. Vehicle travel reduction targets reduce investments in roadway expansions and parking subsidies, and increase support for multimodal planning, improved connectivity, TDM programs and Smart Growth development policies. These shifts respond to changing user demands and provide many economic, social and environmental benefits. This webinar should be of interest to anybody who wants to help create a more efficient and equitable transportation system.
Speaker
Todd Litman is founder and executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, an independent research organization dedicated to developing innovative solutions to transport problems. His work helps expand the range of impacts and options considered in transportation decision-making, improve evaluation methods, and make specialized technical concepts accessible to a larger audience. His research is used worldwide in transport planning and policy analysis.
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As part of its greenhouse gas reduction strategy, the State of California stopped evaluating projects using vehicular level-of-service and replaced it with assessments of changes in vehicle miles of travel (VMT). The change ran into a host of technical issues that are still being worked through. The problems are particularly acute for projects in small towns and rural areas, where agencies do not have traffic models designed for this type of analysis.
GHD has developed a GIS-based methodology for assessing the VMT impacts of proposed land development projects in smaller towns and rural areas. The methodology was designed to be easy to use by agency staff using data and software they already have. It assesses VMT impacts based on residential and employment density, the proximity of complementary land uses, and access to a safe bicycling network. Although not perfect, it does provide a practical tool for agencies with limited resources.
Speaker
Don Hubbard is a senior transportation planner and traffic engineer with extensive experience in travel demand forecasting and transportation policy. Don is a rare combination of a “big-picture” regional planner and a detail-oriented traffic engineer. He specializes in highly defensible transportation analyses for projects with a strong likelihood of litigation. Don also develops new techniques for improved modeling. For example, the “4Ds” post-processor he developed to account for smart growth characteristics is now used in models across the U.S.. Similarly, his “dynamic validation” technique to assess model performance has now been adopted as standard practice for many agencies.
