Options for Integrating Urban Land Use and Travel Demand Models

Despite a growing interest among the transportation planning community for the use of more sophisticated land use forecasting tools, agencies have been slow to adopt state-of-the-art land use modeling practices. Barriers include a multitude of different approaches to land use modeling and, in particular integrated transport-land use modeling, and a large of uncertainty involved in their development This proposal is a technology transfer project involving integrated transport-land use modeling programs. The Data Resource Center of Metro, the regional planning agency for Portland, Oregon, wishes to apply its land use modeling system, MetroScope at another regional planning agency and at Portland…

Despite a growing interest among the transportation planning community for the use of more sophisticated land use forecasting tools, agencies have been slow to adopt state-of-the-art land use modeling practices. Barriers include a multitude of different approaches to land use modeling and, in particular integrated transport-land use modeling, and a large of uncertainty involved in their development

This proposal is a technology transfer project involving integrated transport-land use modeling programs.  The Data Resource Center of Metro, the regional planning agency for Portland, Oregon, wishes to apply its land use modeling system, MetroScope at another regional planning agency and at Portland State University.  Likewise, the Transportation Planning and Analysis Unit of the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is interested in exploring the wider application of one of its internally developed modeling tools, the Land Use Scenario Developer in R (LUSDR). 

Both groups have made arrangements to develop versions of MetroScope and LUSDR in parallel at a single agency, the Mid-Willamette Council of Governments (MWCOG), which serves the Salem-Kaiser region of Oregon.  Both Metro and ODOT have also agreed to create mirror installations in the Travel Demand Modeling Lab at Portland State University for independent evaluation and for future use in instruction, research and professional training.

PSU will play a role in performing an independent evaluation of performance and capabilities of the two model systems.  PSU will also contribute to the larger analysis in which research team members from Metro, ODOT and MWVCOG analyze the requirements and costs of system development.