Transportation Planning

Qing Shen, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
This article is a revision of the previous edition article by R. Cervero, volume 23, pp. 15873–15878, Ó 2001, Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract

This article provides an overview of transportation planning – an interdisciplinary field of research and practice that informs
and supports decision making for improving the movement of people and goods that is essential for efficient economic
production and effective social interaction. It introduces the readers to the basic concepts, frameworks, and analytical tools.
Drawing primarily upon experience from the United States, it also briefly describes the field’s evolving focus from mobility to
accessibility, livability, and sustainability. The article ends with a discussion of the coming challenges and opportunities for
transportation planning.

Transportation planning is a field of research and practice that
informs and supports decision making – at both strategic and
operational levels – for mobility and accessibility improve-
ments. Building national highway and rail networks to stimu-
late economic growth, developing high-density cities with
convenient public transit to reduce automobile dependence,
promoting flexible work schedules and telecommuting to
relieve peak-hour traffic congestion, and adopting fuel and
congestion taxes to lower the vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) are
examples of strategic decisions. Siting airports, railway stations,
freeway interchanges, and bus lines and terminals; providing
additional park-and-ride facilities; extending bike lanes and
expanding bike share programs; and setting user fees for high-
occupancy toll (HOT) lanes are examples of decisions at the
operational level.
The main functions of transportation planning are to
establish the linkages between transportation and the goals of
a community (such as a city or a region) or an organization
(such as a government agency or a private firm); forecast future
movements of people, goods, and ideas between geographic
locations; evaluate alternative approaches to facilitate these
movements; and inform stakeholders of the likely economic,
social, and environmental consequences of the choices. The
analysis and evaluation often employ empirical data and
quantitative methods, and are guided by the fundamental
principles of efficiency, equity, and, increasingly, livability and
sustainability.
The growth and evolution of transportation planning have
reflected the changing demographic, economic, social, insti-
tutional, and technological characteristics of society. In the
1950s and much of the 1960s, transportation planning placed
its primary emphasis on developing conceptual frameworks
and analytical tools to support the construction of highways
to accommodate the fast growth of populations, economies,
and metropolitan areas and the rapid increase in automobile
use (Meyer and Miller, 2001). Since the late 1960s, various
social and environmental issues have become major
concerns in transportation planning, and the efficient use of
existing infrastructure, reduction of environmental impacts,
and creation of livable cities have become important societal
goals (Meyer and Miller, 2001). In particular, since the late
1990s, increasing awareness of global climate change and its
strong connection with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
from automobiles has placed sustainability at the center
stage of transportation planning (Cervero, 1998; Newman
and Kenworthy, 1999; Banister, 2002). Reflecting the diverse
concerns and shifting emphasis, many new ideas and
approaches have emerged in this field over the last four
decades.
As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, new chal-
lenges and opportunities for transportation planners are
mostly found in cities. Furthermore, transportation planning is
especially needed in large urban areas where human activities
are highly concentrated, and where spatial interactions among
individuals and organizations are highly intensive and
complex. Therefore, urban transportation planning has been,
and will continue to be, the most active area of this field.
Basic Concepts and Frameworks
Transportation planning is an interdisciplinary field that has
multiple intellectual roots. Like any other field, transportation
planning employs many concepts and frameworks. These
concepts and frameworks are from diverse sources, including
the academic disciplines of planning, engineering, economics,
and geography.
Transportation is closely tied to the concept of mobility – the
ability to move people and goods from one location to another
quickly, safely, and cost-effectively. Travel speed, road capacity,
transit service frequency and reliability, the resulting time
savings, and the resulting volumes of people and freight
transported are among the common measures of mobility.
High mobility is generally desirable, but should not be seen as
the ultimate goal for planning and decision making. This is
because the movement of people and goods is rarely an end in
itself; rather, it is a means to achieve certain goals of individ-
uals, organizations, and communities. Going to work, meeting
friends, increasing labor productivity, manufacturing products,
supporting economic development, and improving livability
are examples of goals for which transportation serves as
a means.
Once the goals associated with movement are taken into
consideration, transportation is most fundamentally about

616 International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 24 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.74048-7

providing accessibility, which refers to the ease of reaching
spatially distributed economic and social opportunities. The
most basic mathematical expression of accessibility is the
summation of spatially distributed opportunities weighted by
the corresponding impedances, which measure the effect of
travel distance, time, or monetary cost. Accessibility is a func-
tion of both the transportation system and the activity system that is
usually characterized by land use. Increasing mobility is only
one possible way to improve accessibility; shortening travel
distances to destinations (i.e., proximity) and enabling remote
interactions via the Internet or other electronic means are other
possible ways (Levine et al., 2012; Shen, 2000). Focusing
narrowly on the transportation system would be a partial and
unsatisfactory approach to transportation planning.
Closely related to the notion of transportation as a means
for participation in economic and social activities, trans-
portation is derived demand in that its utilities come from the
activities in various locations accessed via travel, not from the
travel itself. In fact, with the exception of occasional driving for
fun and biking and walking for recreation, transportation
involves disutility in the form of time spent, in addition to
monetary costs, safety risks, and discomfort. The generalized
travel cost represents the sum of these various forms of disutility.
Conceptually, transportation demand can shift because of
changes in the activity system or in travel cost. The former is
fundamentally determined by the level, location, and other
characteristics of economic production and social interaction.
The latter is primarily a function of transportation service
quality, capacity, and price. Technology is often the key driving
force behind dynamic changes in transportation demand and
supply.
For participation in a given set of activities, individuals (and
organizations, such as firms) will choose the transportation
options that minimize their generalized travel costs. A trans-
portation option is some combination of travel modes, routes,
and schedules. Individuals with different socioeconomic,
demographic, and lifestyle characteristics tend to find different
options to be the best choice. For example, high-income
professionals tend to place higher opportunity costs on travel
time and hence prefer driving alone, whereas low-income
workers and senior citizens tend to take public transit for,
respectively, financial and health reasons. Similarly, different
firms often choose different transportation options for
shipping inputs and products. This diversity in demand
provides the fundamental economic rationale for developing
multimodal transportation. It also relates to many social equity
issues that must be addressed in transportation decision
making. Historically, advances in technology and
restructurings of the economy have continuously redefined
the available transportation options, which have recently
added various combinations of telecommuting, teleshopping,
telesocializing, and travel in physical space.
Individuals’ rational transportation options, however, are
not always preferable from the viewpoint of the society as
a whole. This is because the private cost of transportation is often
different from the social cost of transportation due to market and
policy failures. In the United States and many other parts of the
world, excessively large percentages of people choose to travel
by private automobiles because the costs borne by them do not
fully account for the environmental and social externalities. The
Transportation Planning 617
discrepancy between private and social costs of transportation
fundamentally justifies transportation planning in the public
domain.
Transportation planning is an integral part of transportation
decision making that takes place within an institutional frame-
work consisting of special government agencies, service
providers, participating organizations, community and interest
groups, formal and informal interactions among these entities
and people, funding mechanisms, and relevant laws, regula-
tions, and norms. The composition and characteristics of the
institutional environment largely define the transportation
planning and decision-making process. Because the institu-
tional environment is dynamic, the transportation planning
and decision-making process also changes over time.
In the United States, transportation decision making in the
1950s and 1960s was based on the rational planning model
(Meyer and Miller, 2001). The rational planning process typically
included the key steps of defining goals and objectives,
generating alternative approaches, evaluating alternatives,
selecting an optimal alternative, and implementing the
chosen alternative. Since the 1970s, alternative planning
models, such as incremental planning, advocacy planning,
and communicative planning, have been adopted in various
contexts of transportation decision making. The application
of these alternative planning models, often to complement
rather than replace the rational model, reflects increasingly
pluralistic values, diverse interests, complex organizational
and power structures, acute awareness of environmental
and financial constraints, and better understanding of uncer-
tainties. It also reflects the growing sophistication of trans-
portation planning as a field.
A systems perspective is effective for conceptualizing trans-
portation planning problems and examining transportation
impacts (Meyer and Miller, 2001). Transportation can be
viewed as one system that is a component of numerous
systems, such as the economic system and the ecological
system. It interacts with many other systems, such as land
use, energy, telecommunications, demographics, and social
relationships. The transportation system itself is composed of
subsystems, including users, modes, networks, facilities, and
services, which are interconnected. Key concepts of systems
theory have found useful applications in transportation
planning (Meyer and Miller, 2001).
Analytical Tools
Transportation planning is also an applied field that relies on
some standard tools to perform its functions. Many of these
tools are analytical methods adopted from other fields.
Examples are (1) statistical analysis of travel survey data, which
applies methods developed in mathematics and statistics; (2)
visualization and spatial analysis of transportation networks,
facilities, built environments, peak and off-peak distributions
of trip origins and destinations, and traffic flows using
geographic information systems (GIS) and associated tools
that originated from computer science and geography; (3)
evaluation of alternative transportation projects and plans by
conducting cost–benefit analysis or cost-effectiveness analysis,
which are commonly applied techniques of economic
618 Transportation Planning
analysis; and (4) assessment of air quality, noise, and other
environmental impacts of transportation by employing
models built by scientists and engineers.
Some analytical tools have been developed specifically for
transportation planning, even though many researchers from
other disciplinary backgrounds have contributed to the efforts.
The most fundamental tool of this kind is the urban trans-
portation modeling system (UTMS), also known as the four-step
travel demand model, which was originally developed in the
1950s and 1960s to generate forecasts of future volumes of
travel on highways and transit lines (Meyer and Miller, 2001).
The four steps refer to (1) trip generation, (2) trip distribution,
(3) mode split, and (4) trip assignment. In the first step, the
region is subdivided into a large number of areal units called
traffic analysis zones (TAZs). Then, trips by travel purpose
(e.g., home-based work, home-based other, and nonhome-
based) are generated for each zone. Trips are classified as
either a production (the home end or origin of a trip) or an
attraction (the nonhome end or destination of a trip). Linear
regression models are typically used to predict trips generated
in a zone. Models for productions often include the number
of households in the zone, household size, income, and
automobile ownership as independent variables, whereas
models for attractions often include numbers of jobs and
households in the zone as independent variables.
In the second step, a mathematical procedure – most
commonly a gravity model – is used to link the productions
and attractions among all zones, and distribute the trips from
each production zone to each attraction zone. These zone-to-
zone flows include commuting trips to workplaces and other
trips for various purposes such as shopping, visiting friends,
and going to entertainment and sporting events. In an
analogous form of the physics law of gravitation, the model
computes the flow of trips between each zone pair based on
the total number of trips produced in the origin zone, the
total number of trips attracted to the destination zone, and
travel impedance for going from the origin to the destination.
Everything else being equal, the flow of trips from an origin
zone to a destination zone increases with the total numbers
of productions and attractions but decreases with the travel
impedance.
In the third step, the predicted flows of trips are divided
among available modes, such as drive alone, carpool, public
transit, bike, and walk. Modal split is determined by the char-
acteristics of competing modes such as speeds and costs; the
characteristics of travelers such as income, automobile owner-
ship, and age; as well as the characteristics of the trips them-
selves such as the trip purpose and the built environments of
the origin and destination. Alternative methods have been
developed to predict the percentage of trips using each avail-
able mode. Today, this procedure is typically accomplished by
employing some kind of discrete choice model – most often
the multinomial logit model – that computes the probability
of choosing each mode.
In the final step, the predicted flows by mode are assigned to
highway and transit networks. There are alternative computer
algorithms for trip assignment, including minimum path
assignment, various forms of user equilibrium assignment, and
system optimum assignment. These alternative methods are
based on different assumptions and, therefore, are suitable for
different application contexts. Minimum path assignment,
which loads all trips from any origin zone to any destination
zone onto a single lowest cost path, is unreasonable except in
the rare case where traffic is sparse, networks are uncongested,
and alternative routes are highly differentiated in terms of
travel cost. User equilibrium assignment, which generally
assumes that each traveler chooses the perceived optimal route,
is the more realistic approach. In contrast, system optimum
assignment, which aims to minimize the overall congestion by
informing and influencing travelers’ route choice, is not
behaviorally realistic but useful for improving the efficiency of
existing networks.
For over half a century, the four-step travel demand model has
been widely applied, especially to urban transportation planning
in large metropolitan regions. While robust and long lasting, the
model has been criticized for its various shortcomings (Banister,
2002). The four-step technical process is based on the rational
model of planning and decision making, which has its
limitations in dealing with problems involving diverse values
and major uncertainties. In addition, it is built upon a weak
behavioral foundation and relies primarily on empirical
relationships to predict changes. Furthermore, it has a strong
orientation toward promoting more and faster travel as the
solution to transportation problems.
Researchers have effectively responded to some of the crit-
icisms of the model. In particular, since the 1970s, discrete
choice models based on the random utility theory have been
incorporated into the modal split procedure of the traditional
four-step model. Discrete choice models, developed by
Domencich and McFadden (1975), Ben-Akiva and Lerman
(1985), and others, model the decision making of individual
travelers. The underlying assumption is that an individual
traveler will choose an alternative that appears to maximize
the utility. Recognizing that people do not always choose the
objectively best option or make consistent choices over time,
the utility function consists of two components: (1) the
systematic and observable component that is identical to the
conventional economic utility function, and (2) a random
component that is used to capture variations in perceptions
among individual travelers, as well as model specification
and data measurement errors. The systematic component of
the utility for an individual is a function of the attributes of
each alternative and the characteristics of the individual.
With the random component included, the utility func-
tion does not determine which alternative is definitely the
best for an individual, but enables the calculation of
the probability that a given alternative will be chosen from
the available choice set by an individual who has certain
characteristics. The probability can have different functional
forms based on different assumptions about the statistical
distribution of the random component. The commonly used
logit model results from an assumed Gumbel distribution of
the random term.
The development of the discrete choice models has signifi-
cantly advanced travel demand analysis by strengthening its
behavioral foundation. Although modal choice has been the
main area of application, discrete choice models have been
employed to examine many other transportation decisions,
including automobile ownership, trip destination choice, and
residential location choice.

Almost in parallel, over three decades of research efforts
have been made to develop activity-based models, which
predict travel demand by focusing on people’s participation
in activities, such as working, shopping, and recreation. These
models incorporate the time–space geography framework
originated by Hägerstrand (1970), which conceptualizes the
opportunities for, and constraints on, activity participation
by individuals with various locational, demographic, and
socioeconomic characteristics. Travel is derived from daily
activities undertaken by households and individuals, and
these activities are spatially distributed but temporarily
sequenced and bounded. In addition to the activity-based
framework, these models typically incorporate the tour
instead of the trip as the basic unit for travel demand
analysis, and apply microsimulation techniques at the
disaggregate level of households and persons to convert
activity and travel choices into a series of discrete decisions
(Davidson et al., 2007).
The activity-based approach has several distinctive
strengths that do not exist in the four-step modeling
framework. It is highly disaggregate in representing the
travel behavior of each individual and household, which
helps it avoid the errors associated with generalization and
lend itself to a more realistic and accurate portrayal of
travel behavior. It explicitly models the relationships
between an individual’s different activities (e.g., work and
nonwork), as well as the interactions between household
members. These capacities, together with detailed
information about activities and travel segmentation,
substantially broaden the range of transportation planning
and policy issues that the models can help address. For
example, activity-based models can more realistically assess
the effect of implementing high-occupancy vehicle (HOV)
lanes by accounting for intrahousehold travel decision
making. Another example of a useful application of activity-
based models is to examine the amount of travel reduction
resulting from telecommuting, which may redistribute some
component trips (e.g., dropping off the kids at school on
the way to one’s workplace in the morning and shopping
for groceries in a supermarket on the way back in the
afternoon) of the preexisting commuting tour to other time
windows.
Activity-based models also have shortcomings: they are
more complicated and, therefore, the development cost is
much higher; they require the collection of disaggregate travel
diary data that are more complete and accurate in identifying
household interactions as well as individuals’ activities, which
is a high expectation not easily met through home interview
surveys. Furthermore, there are still some challenging theoret-
ical and technical issues that need to be addressed in future
research (Davidson et al., 2007).
Activity-based models have recently become viable alter-
natives to four-step models for a variety of applications. In the
United States, a number of metropolitan areas, including New
York, San Francisco, Denver, and Portland, are now using
activity-based models for transportation planning. Several
other metropolitan areas, including Chicago, Seattle, and
Houston, are currently developing models of this type.
Activity-based models have also been developed and applied
in several European cities. However, the practical – not just
Transportation Planning 619
the theoretical – advantages of the activity-based approach
must be more clearly demonstrated before it can be widely
adopted for travel demand modeling.
Another important technical tool, which produces required
data for long-range travel demand analysis, is the land use
model. Since the movement of people and goods is derived
from the economic and social activities in which they
participate, or to which they contribute, the quantities and
locations of residential, employment, commercial, service,
and recreational activities must first be measured or predicted
before the demand for transportation is analyzed.
Understanding and modeling the activity system are
especially critical for the long term because it cannot be
assumed to remain the same. Land use models serve as an
essential tool for depicting likely future changes in the
activity system as a basic input for forecasting future travel
demand. At the same time, these models also provide the
capacity for assessing the likely short-term and long-term
impacts of proposed changes in the transportation system on
the activity system.
Urban modeling, a field of research focusing on building
land use models for urban areas, has been active for over half
a century, although its development certainly did not follow
a smooth upward curve. In general, these models make
conditional predictions of land use changes in a city or
metropolitan region in accordance with changes in the
economy, employment, and population. The models either
explicitly or implicitly incorporate both the market mecha-
nisms for, and the policy constraints on, urban land allocation.
Accessibility and other attributes are evaluated for each land
unit (e.g., a parcel or a grid cell), and available land units are
allocated to competing users (e.g., firms in different economic
sectors and households with different socioeconomic charac-
teristics) who place different utilities on these attributes.
Despite the fundamental importance of accessibility and
spatial interaction in land use models, in the United States the
analysis of the activity system proceeded essentially indepen-
dent of the analysis of the transportation system for decades.
That was primarily because, institutionally and professionally,
different agencies and people were responsible for the respec-
tive tasks (Meyer and Miller, 2001). Since the early 1990s,
however, the connection between land use and travel
demand analyses has been greatly strengthened. Recognizing
the effects of transportation on land use and the en-
vironment, the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and the
1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act both
required metropolitan planning agencies to integrate land use
and transportation planning (Meyer and Miller, 2001;
Waddell, 2002). Additional pressure for this integration has
come from state programs for growth management that
promote a stronger linkage of land use and transportation
planning, as well as from concerned researchers, practitioners,
and environmental advocates (Waddell, 2002).
Today, in various parts of the world, operational models are
employed to produce land use and travel demand forecasts by
accounting for the interactions between the two systems. Some
of these models are integrated land use and transportation models,
which represent the interactions between land use and trans-
portation within a unified model of activity and transportation
systems. Others are separate but loosely coupled models of
620 Transportation Planning
land use and travel demand that feed each other with outputs
(e.g., jobs and households from the land use model, and modal
shares, travel times, and travel costs from the travel demand
model) for future years. In either case, the dynamic relationship
between land use and transportation – for instance, improved
accessibility in an area attracts more firms and households to
locate there, which in turn can cause traffic congestion, lower
accessibility, and discourage further growth – can be captured.
Evolving Focus from Mobility to Accessibility,
Livability, and Sustainability
The most basic function of a transportation system is to increase
mobility, but the true economic value of mobility is not realized
until it effectively connects people and goods to their desired
destinations. Therefore, while mobility is the most distinctive
property of a transportation system, accessibility is conceptually
the more appropriate measure of its performance (Levine et al.,
2012). As livability and sustainability become primary goals for
a growing number of countries, regions, and cities, accessibility
will increasingly become the main focus of transportation
planning. In a world with finite resources but growing needs,
transportation planners are responsible for helping improve
quality of life by increasing accessibility while avoiding
irreparable damage to the environment by restraining travel-
related energy consumption and emissions.
Despite the clear advantage of emphasizing accessibility
over mobility, in most parts of the world enhancing mobility
used to be, and in many cases continues to be, the primary goal
for transportation planning. In the Unites States, for almost
half a century after World War II, transportation planning
aimed principally at building highways to accommodate
private automobiles. While it certainly achieved many positive
results, including higher economic productivity and speedier
travel for the great majority of the population, it also generated
various undesirable consequences. Traffic congestion, lack of
adequate public transit service and bike and pedestrian facili-
ties, and degradation of old urban neighborhoods have been
some of the negative outcomes (Cervero, 1998). In addition,
the automobile-oriented mobility enhancement has resulted
in a huge accessibility gap for those who depend on public
transit (Shen, 1998).
The United States has become the world’s most automobile-
dependent country: the number of vehicles per capita is about
0.8; and 76% of commuters drive alone, whereas barely 4.9%
of them take public transportation (Davis et al., 2012). This
high level of automobile dependency poses major challenges
for energy security and environmental sustainability: with less
than 5% of the world’s population, the United States
consumes about 22% of global petroleum production and
generates about 20% of total carbon dioxide emissions, and
the transportation sector accounts for approximately one-
third of its carbon emissions (Davis et al., 2012).
Continuation of mobility-focused transportation devel-
opment would contradict the global trend of sustainable
development. Although the awareness of certain negative
environmental and social consequences of automobile depen-
dency has existed for decades, the real wake-up call came in the
1990s with the understanding of climate change and its strong
connection to transportation. The adoption of the Kyoto
Protocol in 1997 marked the beginning of a new era of
transportation planning in the United States, as well as in
many other countries. Reducing GHG emissions has become a
key objective not only for automobile manufacturers and
energy suppliers, but also for transportation planners. This is
because, for the foreseeable future, more efficient vehicles
and lower carbon fuels will not effectively mitigate GHG
emissions unless people reduce their motorized travel
(Hankey and Marshall, 2010).
By shifting focus from mobility to accessibility, and by
setting livability and sustainability as the ultimate goals,
transportation planning has opened up to new ideas and
incorporated new approaches. Most importantly, land use is no
longer taken as a given, but seen as a means for achieving the
goals by modifying the patterns of activity participation and
travel. New urbanism design guidelines, smart growth princi-
ples, and transit-oriented developments (TOD) have become
widely accepted land use measures for reducing automobile
use and encouraging transit use, biking, and walking. There
have been many other significant changes, including
a stronger emphasis on transportation system management
and demand management, wider applications of technology
(e.g., telecommuting and real-time transit information), more
complete cost accounting in transportation pricing, and
deepened concerns for social equity and environmental
impact (Meyer and Miller, 2001).
More opportunities have been created for new and exciting
research in transportation planning. For example, a large
number of publications have been added to the literature on
the travel behavioral effects of land use initiatives (Ewing and
Cervero, 2010). Vigorous research activities have also been
seen in important topic areas of travel demand management,
including parking charges, congestion pricing, and mileage-
based fuel taxes. In addition, solid efforts have been made to
shed new light on the viability and values of transportation
alternatives. For example, real-time transit information
accessible through mobile phones creates new possibilities to
make public transportation more attractive and competitive
(Watkins et al., 2011). Another example is the sudden surge
of research interest in nonmotorized transportation, which
has obtained encouraging findings of measurable health
benefits from biking and walking.
The new era has also witnessed significant changes in the
practice of transportation planning. Travel demand models and
land use models have become more integrated (Waddell,
2002). Numerous development projects that follow the
guidelines of new urbanisms and TOD have been
implemented, and smart growth principles have been
adopted by many planning agencies in the United States and
beyond. More carpool and bus lanes have been created, and
more bicycle facilities have been built, in many cities. Parking
regulations have been modified by many local governments.
These are just a few examples of the encouraging changes.
Challenges and Opportunities for Future Research
Transportation planning, which is essential for well-informed
decision making on infrastructure, services, and policies for
overcoming spatial barriers to economic and social activities,

will continue to be a vibrant field in the future. To play its role
effectively – in particular, to help cities and regions build
appropriate connections between their mobility and
accessibility improvement strategies and their livability and
sustainability goals – transportation planning must continue
to advance knowledge. There are major knowledge gaps,
including the following, which present both great challenges
and opportunities for future research.
First, there is confusion over the effect of land use change on
travel behavior. A large volume of research on this topic has so
far generated inconsistent findings. Most of the empirical
studies based on intrametropolitan data have identified
a statistically significant relationship between land use and
travel demand, but suggested a rather modest effect as shown
by the low elasticity values (Ewing and Cervero, 2010). Much
greater effects, however, are seen by comparing cities or
metropolitan areas using aggregate data on density and per
capita energy consumption (Newman and Kenworthy, 1999;
Glaeser, 2011). What do these inconsistent findings imply
regarding the relationship between the activity system and
the transportation system? Conceptually, land use change,
such as densification or diversification, directly alters only
some physical aspect of the activity system. It may have little
impact on individuals’ current pattern of activity par-
ticipation, and hence their short-term travel behavior remains
unchanged. The challenge is to reconcile the generally weak
short-term effects and the much stronger cumulative effects.
In addition to land use change, what other factors may
trigger substantial adjustments in people’s spatial and
temporal arrangements of activities? Implementation of
complementary governmental policies such as congestion
pricing and mileage-based fuel tax, provision of convenient
and safe transit and nonmotorized options, formation of new
societal norms, and change of individual values are all
possible factors for future investigation.
Second, there is currently a lack of systematic research effort to
support planning for alternative transportation modes. Although
there are recent empirical studies on various issues concerning
public transit and nomotorized travel, they do not serve as
a consolidated foundation for reenvisioning the alternative
modes. For example, several studies have identified important
economic and psychological benefits brought to transit riders
by real-time bus arrival information systems (Zhang et al.,
2008; Watkins et al., 2011), and many research projects have
recently been undertaken to show the health benefits
associated with walking and biking. These efforts, although
offering useful insights, do not provide sufficient information
to address transportation planning questions such as whether
or not public transit will become a viable option for
suburban residents, and whether or not adding hundreds of
miles of bicycle lanes to the existing street network will
produce enough benefits to offset the costs.
Third, there is rather limited understanding of the likely impacts
of technologies on the transportation system, the activity system,
and their interrelation in the foreseeable future. Major break-
throughs in automotive and fuel technologies could dramati-
cally reduce oil dependence and GHG emissions, and
significantly improve the sustainability prospect of the trans-
portation system. Although future advances in these technol-
ogies are uncertain, transportation planning will be more
Transportation Planning 621
informative if it can draw from careful analyses of alternative
scenarios and implications.
Similarly, information and communications technologies
(ICT) have started to demonstrate their huge capacity to modify
the patterns of activity and transportation of individuals and
organizations, but the implications for transportation planning
are not clear. Transportation researchers tend to concentrate
their analysis on the direct and short-term effects of ICT in the
forms of travel substitution, generation, and reconfiguration
(Mokhtarian, 1990). The longer term secondary impacts on the
transportation system through relocations of residence and
activities are insufficiently investigated (Shen, 2000). Perhaps
more critically for livability and sustainability, timely efforts
should be made to understand how future developments in
ICT may provide individuals and organizations with an
adaptive ability, so that they can maintain their basic
economic and social functions while adjusting their spatial
and temporal configurations of activities at a relatively low
transaction cost.
Fourth, transportation planners must learn to incorporate
uncertainty explicitly into the planning process. The future is always
unknown, but the level of uncertainty, and hence the risk, is
especially high when the decision making is about a major
project or policy that has long-term livability and sustainability
consequences. High-level uncertainty is quite common in
planning and decision making, but for decades
transportation planning managed to largely follow the
rational planning process (Banister, 2002). Given its strong
relationships with the future well-being of human society, on
one hand, and with dynamic technological forces, on the
other hand, the transportation system should be planned
with a clear understanding of the assumptions, uncertainties,
and complexities involved. In addition, it will be critical to
devise mechanisms to support ‘incremental but informed
planning’ by continuously monitoring technological,
economic, social, and behavioral changes over time, and by
promptly veering onto another course if future events make
that necessary (Wachs, 2012).
Finally, with a rapidly growing population and economy,
and rising levels of automobile ownership, developing countries
are the new frontier for transportation planning research and inno-
vation. Because the majority of the world’s population reside in
these countries, future changes in their travel behavior will have
a profound implication for sustainability. The transportation
sector currently accounts for a lower percentage of the total
GHG emissions in developing countries, but it is increasing
rapidly with the expansion of the car-owning middle-class
population (Dulal et al., 2011). For example, China has
recently become the world’s top country in vehicle sales, and
its annual vehicle growth rates for the next 10 years are
projected to be around 10%. Fast-paced motorization and
urbanization in developing countries present a highly
challenging yet rewarding task for transportation planners: to
help achieve livability and sustainability goals by helping
reshape the mobility and activity systems. What do they need
to study to prepare themselves for this huge responsibility?
The above list is far from exhaustive; one could add many
more future challenges and opportunities, ranging from
improving travel demand models to reforming transportation
planning institutions. But the list is sufficient to illustrate the
622 Transportation Planning
variety of important problems that will continue to make
transportation planning an exciting, and hopefully fruitful,
field for the foreseeable future.
See also: Urban Internal Spatial Structure; Urban Planning:
Methods and Technologies; Urban Policy in North America;
Urban Sprawl.
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