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Development of a neighborhood commute mode share model using nationally-available data

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Abstract

Practitioners often use demand models to predict how neighborhood-level land use, infrastructure, demographic, and other changes may impact transportation systems. Few of the models available to predict automobile, transit, bicycle, and pedestrian travel are based on easily-accessible data, which creates barriers for transportation agencies with limited data or modeling resources. We help fill this gap by developing a fractional multinomial logit model that estimates United States neighborhood work commute mode shares using existing, nationally-available data from 5000 randomly-selected, non-adjacent census tracts. After controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, the model shows that public transit, walk, and bicycle commuting are associated with higher population and employment density, more housing constructed prior to 1940, and more rental housing. Public transit and walk commuting are associated with being in a Northeastern state, automobile commuting is associated with being in a Southern state, and bicycle commuting is associated with being in a West Coast state. Validation of the model using a separate set of 1000 census tracts and application of the model in the Milwaukee metropolitan region show promise but also highlight several limitations of this approach. This sketch-planning model is a building block for future practically-oriented neighborhood commute mode share models.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Office of Research through the Research and Creative Activities Support (RACAS) program award AAA3537. We thank the Office of Research staff for their support and the RACAS proposal reviewers for their helpful input. We also thank the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC) for sharing population and employment projections for this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Urban Planning, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2131 E. Hartford Avenue, Milwaukee, WI, 53211, USA

    Robert J. Schneider, Lingqian Hu & Joseph Stefanich

Authors
  1. Robert J. Schneider
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  2. Lingqian Hu
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  3. Joseph Stefanich
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Contributions

RJ Schneider: Analysis approach; Modeling; Results summary; Validation summary; Manuscript writing; Manuscript revisions. L Hu: Analysis approach; Literature review; Summary statistics; Draft analysis text. J Stefanich: Literature review; Data collection; Sample selection; GIS analysis.

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Correspondence to Robert J. Schneider.

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Schneider, R.J., Hu, L. & Stefanich, J. Development of a neighborhood commute mode share model using nationally-available data. Transportation 46, 909–929 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-017-9813-z

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