Travel and the Built Environment—A Meta-Analysis

Results and conclusions: Consistent with prior work, we find that among built environmental variables, accessibility to destinations is most strongly influencesassociated with vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and walking among built environmental variables. Street designs are also linked to associated with influence VMT. , and the decision to walk is influenced by j The decision to walk, the results show, areis associated with jJob-housing balance and intersection density. are associated with the decision to walk as well. The meta-analysis reveals that proximity to transit is, on average, asmore strongly related to associated with bus and train usewill lure motorists to buses and trains more thanas are any built environmental variablesfactor. Surprisingly, population density is found to exert relatively little influencebe weakly associated with on travel behavior once these other variables are controlled. Takeaway for practice: The elasticities derived in this meta-analysis may be used to post- process outputs of travel or activity models, or be used in sketch planning applications ranging from climate action plans to health impact assessments. However, sample sizes are small in many cases, and the number of studies controlling for residential preferences and attitudes is still miniscule. Also, data limitations prevent us from reporting confidence intervals for meta-analysis results. As more built environment-travel studies appear in the planning literature, it will be necessary to refine these meta-analytic results should be updated and refined.