Travel and the Built Environment in Rural Communities

Harry Schukei and Dana Rowangould

Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series from Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis

Abstract: Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation poses a significant challenge in rural communities and at the edges of metropolitan areas where rural and urban populations meet, otherwise known as exurban fringe. Populations living in these areas rely more heavily on personal vehicle travel than nonrural populations do and are more likely to have trouble getting to and from important destinations. One approach to curtailing transportation GHG emissions is through land use planning, for example by directing population growth into compact, walkable communities with access to transit. However, nearly all research to date on this topic has focused on urban and suburban areas, leaving decision-makers in exurban and rural communities with little guidance for how to effectively reduce GHGs through changes to land use and development in their communities. Researchers at the University of Vermont sought to answer the question: is the relationship between travel and the built environment the same in urban and rural areas? They analyzed nationwide data from the United States Federal Highway Administration on nearly 110,000 people and detailed information on land use and development from the United States Environmental Protection Agency Smart Location Database. They determined what aspects of the built environment in different types of locations (urban, rural, etc.) were associated with sustainable travel behaviors such as greater rates of walking and biking, less reliance on automobile travel, and fewer vehicle miles traveled or VMT, which is the number of miles driven in a car. This policy brief summarizes the findings from that research and provides policy implications. View the NCST Project Webpage

Keywords: Social and Behavioral Sciences; Built environment; travel behavior; VMT; mode choice; rural (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/85d2f9d5.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt85d2f9d5

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series from Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().