The number and share of U.S. residents aged 60+ years have increased substantially since 2000, and both are projected to expand further in the years ahead. The mobility patterns of this growing cohort of travelers are consequential and only lightly studied since the COVID-19 pandemic. To better understand the travel patterns of older adults and how they have evolved since the turn of the century broadly, and following the COVID-19 pandemic in particular, this article analyzes national data from the 2001, 2009, 2017, and 2022 iterations of the U.S. National Household Travel Survey. We compare travelers in their 60s, 70s, and above with middle-aged (aged 30–59 years) and younger travelers (aged 5–14 and 15–29 years) across multiple dimensions. We find that trip-making and person-miles of travel have been falling for older and younger travelers for years and declined dramatically following the pandemic. Meanwhile, both trip lengths and driving rates have grown. We find, as well, that older adults are driving later in life over time, and non-driving adults are making fewer trips and traveling fewer miles than those who remain behind the wheel. We also find that the odds of giving up driving because of a medical condition or disability have declined significantly since 2009, controlling for an array of factors associated with travel. The practical and policy implications of reduced trip-making, longer trips, higher rates of driving, and declining driver cessation among older travelers are many, and warrant more attention from transportation analysts and policymakers in the years ahead.

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically reshaped the landscape of work. With the implementation of lockdown measures to curb the spread of the virus in the spring of 2020, there was a rapid shift toward remote and hybrid work – even in industries and occupations where such practices had been rare. In the booming post-pandemic labor market, many workers have been able to push back on employer return-to-office mandates, as many now prefer hybrid over fully in-office work. With all of this post-pandemic flux, which workers are seeing enduring shifts in their work and commute patterns, and which are not? We examine this question by analyzing 2022 data from the U.S. National Household Travel Survey. While a broad cross-section of the workforce moved home during the early months of the pandemic, we find that post-pandemic remote and hybrid workers look a lot like those who worked away from work pre-pandemic. Such workers are more likely to ride public transit when they do commute; live in households with fewer cars than adults; have disabilities; have higher levels of education; and live in urban (rather than suburban or rural) areas. Meanwhile, Asian or Latino/a workers and those with children in the household are less likely to report permanent reductions in post-pandemic commuting. So while over half of all workers shifted home during the depths of the pandemic, the roughly quarter of the workforce that continues to work remotely, at least part-time, is remarkably similar to the five or so percent of those who worked remotely pre-pandemic.

The percentage of people who work from home (WFH) skyrocketed with the onset of Covid-19. Today, many workers continue to WFH, either completely or a few days a week. One reason for the popularity of WFH is a desire to minimize the commute and its associated costs in time, money, discomfort, and danger. In fact, workers with longer commutes should theoretically receive “compensating differentials” of benefits from their employers that offset their high commute costs. That said, working at a workplace may have advantages, such as stronger connections to coworkers and supervisors, better chances to learn on the job, and improved opportunities for career advancement. Using European Social Survey data, we examine whether commute durations are associated with workers’ perceptions of their job characteristics and desirability, as well as their happiness, or “subjective well-being.” We find that, among those who commute, commute duration is unrelated to wages, job satisfaction, and overall subjective well-being. Workers who WFH report more freedom in setting hours, but face greater stress at work, more work at night, and longer hours, the latter of which may exceed the time they save by not having to commute. Importantly, people who WFH tend to report being more satisfied with their jobs, as well as being well-connected to coworkers and supervisors and having a good chance for professional advancement. Employers and society should work to accommodate WFH with such steps as developing team-building strategies for WFH workers, addressing the “digital divide” where some workers may lack at-home information and communications technology, and adapting cities to WFH, for example by facilitating the conversion of office space to other uses and accommodating the need for more spacious homes.

Most U.S. metropolitan areas developed alongside the automobile, producing neighborhoods of relatively low density. Consequently, access to opportunities in these neighborhoods is predicated on having an automobile, yet many households do not have the resources to purchase one outright, relying on automobile loans to spread out the purchase price. While automobile loans can enable automobile ownership, they also significantly increase the vehicle purchase price, particularly for non-white consumers subject to discriminatory lending practices.In this study, we rely on data from the University of California Consumer Credit Panel from Experian to examine the determinants and geography of automobile debt and its consequences in California, testing whether various automobile debt measures disproportionately affect non-white neighborhoods.We find that, controlling for other factors associated with automobile lending including income, Black and Latino/a neighborhoods have higher total automobile debt, debt burdens (debt relative to income), and automobile loan delinquency rates. In particular, Latino/a neighborhoods shoulder significant automobile debt, while borrowers in Black neighborhoods have the highest delinquency rates. Factors associated with lower total automobile debt and automobile debt burden include better credit ratings, higher residential densities, urban locations, and proximity to rail stations.The findings underscore the importance of policies to offset the costs of automobile ownership and access. As part of this, policymakers should adopt and enforce fair lending rules to combat discriminatory and predatory practices and facilitate access to high-quality financial institutions and products in communities of color.

Throughout the United States, Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are increasingly attempting to shape local land use planning. Some MPOs have developed funding programs that redirect highway and road construction dollars to support less auto-centric community development - which we call Transportation and Land-Use Connection (TLC) programs. Based on a survey of 92 MPOs (out of 402 contacted) and a review of relevant documents, our paper aims to understand the scope and influence of these TLC programs on communities and how their impact is measured. We found that at least 24 MPOs had TLC programs. Our findings show that despite federal funding predominantly supporting these programs, state, county, local, and other regional agencies also provide support. Population size appears to be the most significant influence on an MPO's participation in a TLC program. Most programs measure pre-implementation success through selection criteria reflecting program goals rather than direct impact measurement. For those that do measure after grants have been awarded, increased non-automobile shares tax revenue and jobs-housing balance were the most common ways success was measured. These findings can help MPOs with existing TLC programs improve formulation guidelines and assist MPOs without such programs in adopting them in their jurisdictions.

COVID-19 altered travel patterns in the U.S. Studies have analyzed the effect of the pandemic on travel mode, including working from home, but few have focused on automobile ownership—a relationship with potentially long-term consequences for accessibility, household budgets and debt, and policy efforts to meet climate goals.To understand the association between the pandemic and automobile ownership, we rely on a unique credit panel dataset from Experian and examine three different automobile loan-related outcome measures: annualized growth rate of new automobile loan balances, average new loan size, and the number of new loans. We focus specifically on changes across loans in neighborhoods by race/ethnicity, hypothesizing larger increases in automobile debt in Black and Latino/a neighborhoods, where workers are less likely to be able to telework. The annualized growth rate of new automobile loans increased during the pandemic across all neighborhoods by race/ethnicity, increasing most rapidly in Latino/a neighborhoods. Controlling for other factors, loan size increased similarly across neighborhoods by race/ethnicity. The increase in automobile lending in Latino/a neighborhoods, therefore, likely was explained by a significant uptick in the number of new loans.The growth in automobile lending during the pandemic was potentially prompted by pandemic-induced changes in the need for automobiles and facilitated by an expanded social safety net. As the pandemic and its various forms of public financial assistance recede, the findings underscore the importance of ongoing assistance in enabling automobile ownership or shared access among households with limited means whose livelihoods depend on the access that vehicles provide.

Gender differences in travel are pervasive throughout the world. While gender gaps have narrowed in many social spheres, such is generally not the case for travel. In this study, we examine whether gender differences persist on a relatively new travel mode: ride-hail. We do this by examining the use patterns, experiences, and opinions of nearly 300 travelers in metropolitan Los Angeles, California, USA. Our survey responses show that ride-hail service offers a convenient travel option for women – one that enables many of them to access needed destinations in their daily lives. Women in carless or car-deficit households in particular benefit from using ride-hail services to meet their travel needs, which differ, on average, from men’s. For example, more women use ride-hail services for household-serving trips than men. However, ride-hail is not free of challenges for women. Concerns about safety, fear of personal and financial information leakage, and limited digital literacy and access to financial resources can inhibit or prevent some women from using these services. Compared to men, a larger share of women takes ride-hail trips booked by someone else in the household and/or travels with a companion. These findings suggest that public policy should seek to ensure that the option to use ride-hail is extended to as many people – regardless of gender – as possible, including those without mobile devices with data plans and credit or debit accounts. Riders should also be able to easily report problematic behaviors by drivers or fellow passengers to public authorities, in addition to reviews of and reports to ride-hail companies.

Daily vehicle travel collapsed with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 but largely bounced back by late 2021. The pandemic caused dramatic changes to working, schooling, shopping, and leisure activities, and to the travel associated with them. Several of these changes have so far proven enduring. So, while overall vehicle travel had largely returned to pre-pandemic levels by late 2021, the underlying drivers of this travel have likely changed.To examine one element of this issue, we analyzed whether patterns of daily trip-making shifted temporally between the fall of 2019 and 2021 in the Greater Los Angeles megaregion. We used location-based service data to examine vehicle trip originations for each hour of the day at the U.S. census block group level in October 2019 and October 2021. We observed notable shifts in the timing of post-pandemic PM peak travel, so we examined changes in the ratio of mid-week trips originating in the early afternoon (12–3:59 PM) and the late afternoon/early evening (4–7:59 PM).We found a clear shift in the temporal distribution of PM trip-making, with relatively more late PM peak period trip-making prior to the pandemic, and more early PM peak trip-making in 2021. The peak afternoon/evening trip-making hour shifted from 5–5:59 PM to 3–3:59 PM. We also found that afternoon/evening trip-making in each year is largely explained by three workplace-area/school-area factors: (1) the number of schoolchildren in a block group (earlier); (2) block groups with large shares of potential remote workers (earlier), and (3) block groups with large shares of low-wage jobs and workers of color (later, except for Black workers in 2021). We found the earlier shift in PM peak travel between pre- and late-pandemic periods to be explained most by (1) higher shares of potential remote workers and (2) higher shares of low-wage jobs and workers of color. These findings suggest that the rise of working from home has likely led to a shift in PM peak travel earlier in the afternoon when school chauffeuring trips are most common. This is especially true for low-income workers and workers of color.

The COVID-19 pandemic occasioned significant financial distress and uncertainty for many U.S. transit operators. In the face of this crisis, the federal government provided substantial supplemental operating support. To understand how this fiscal turmoil and relief have affected U.S. transit systems, we conducted two nationwide surveys of transit agency staff in 2020 and 2021-2022. While pandemic-induced financial shortfalls affected service in 2020, with capital projects delayed too, these effects became much more muted by 2021/2022. Most systems reported moderate to substantial increases in federal funding during the pandemic, more so than other funding categories. However, nearly half foresee financial shortfalls once federal relief funding expires. Agencies with higher pre-pandemic ridership and farebox recovery are particularly affected by fare revenue losses and more likely to anticipate shortfalls. In the near term, difficulty hiring and retaining front-line workers was a pressing concern, while very few had plans to maintain pandemic fare suspensions.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the affordable housing crisis is forcing households to seek lower cost housing in the outer reaches of major metropolitan areas, helping to explain recent increases in commute distance. To test this relationship, we use spatial regression to examine the relationship between the availability of affordable housing in close proximity to jobs (jobs-housing fit) and commute distance in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The analysis draws on 2015 Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES) by workplace supplemented with data from the 2013-2017 5-Year American Community Survey on affordable housing units. We find substantial variation in jobs-housing fit across Los Angeles neighborhoods. The imbalance is greatest in higher-income neighborhoods located along the coast and in Orange County, south of Los Angeles. Controlling for other determinants of commute distance, a higher ratio of jobs to affordable housing is associated with longer distance commutes. To address growing commute distances, policymakers must greatly expand and protect the supply of long-term rental housing particularly in job-rich neighborhoods.

Although growth management programs have many purposes, a critical one is to contain urban and suburban sprawl. Their efficacy in this regard is not well understood. In this paper, we review a comprehensive set of growth management tools, used by urban planners and policymakers to curb sprawl, starting with the history of the tool, then describing how it works in practice, and finally presenting any available empirical evidence on how well it works to curb sprawl and/or achieve other public purposes. While growth management isn't a panacea for controlling sprawl, it is certainly not the failure implied by critics.

The COVID-19 crisis elevated the importance of private vehicles. The pandemic drove riders off public transit and spawned additional car-based activities such as drive-through testing and vaccinations and curbside pick-ups. Yet millions of low-income and non-white households do not own vehicles. This chapter draws on a unique credit panel dataset to examine automobile debt and delinquency in California. In particular, we examine whether automobile debt patterns during the pandemic differed from those during and coming out of the Great Recession (December 2007–June 2009). We also analyze the response to the COVID-19 recession across neighborhoods by income and race. Similar to the situation during the Great Recession, we find that the number of automobile loans per borrower declined. While the automobile debt burden (the ratio between total automobile debt and aggregate income) also declined, it fell far less during the pandemic than during the Great Recession. Moreover, automobile loan delinquencies spiked during the Great Recession but instead continued to drop during the pandemic. Finally, the COVID-19 crisis affected consumers differently by both race and income. Automobile debt burden rose in low-income, Latino/a, and Black neighborhoods, a pattern that preceded but continued unabated during the pandemic. The findings suggest that COVID-19 relief may have helped some families manage their automobile-related expenditures. However, other factors, such as increasing automobile prices, likely contributed to growing debt burdens, a potential source of financial distress.

Rapid urban population growth stimulates the challenges of city government authorities in providing the municipal services adequately considering the citizen's demand. While the gap persists between the service provision and citizen's perception on it, the quality of life of cities may deteriorate due to psychological dissatisfaction of dwellers with urban services. Hence the evaluation of the urban service quality from the citizen's perspective and accordingly addressing the gap is necessary for sustainable urban management. This study shows a common framework incorporating SERVQUAL, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Citizen's Score Card to define the quality of municipal services spatially and functionally based on the satisfaction of citizens. The items under the dimensions of SERVQUAL and the weightages of each dimension were set through literature review and expert opinion. Dhaka, the only megacity of Bangladesh is experiencing an impetuous growth towards its northern portion and Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) is the responsible authority to supply the municipal facilities within this area. Nine residential neighborhoods having homogeneous characteristics in terms of population density, residential land use, built up area and income level within the jurisdictional area of DNCC were selected to collect the data. The data were collected through household questionnaire survey using stratified random sampling technique where people responded for each SERVQUAL questions and scored the facilities provided by the DNCC. The result shows citizens are moderately satisfied (63.3%) with municipal services aggregately. To meet the demand of dwellers, the city government authority should be more functional, reliable and participatory and be equipped with qualified manpower and facilities. Despite the locational characteristics are uniform among the case areas, Ward 3, Ward 4 and Ward 31 are in unprivileged state in terms of municipal services. The facilities of public toilet, parking and disaster management activities performed by DNCC are commonly in unsatisfactory state in all areas that require special attention from the authority. Based on the findings, it could be stated that where the city government authority is roughly unsusceptible to meet the demand of the existing population, the enormous population growth within urban areas could affect the life quality poorly. Therefore this paper would fetch a course where the deficiency on urban services would be evaluated under a common arena considering the psychological aspect of citizen, thereby priority interventions could be ascertained for enhancing the life quality of urban areas.

This study addresses the question of parking supply and demand at transit-oriented developments (TODs) through comparative case studies of seven TODs in the U.S.A. As far as the authors can determine, this is one of the first studies to estimate peak parking generation rates for TODs. Developments are often characterized in relation to “D” variables—development density, land use diversity, urban design, destination accessibility and distance to transit. The seven TODs studied in this project are exemplary when it comes to the Ds. At the overall peak hour, just 51.2%–84.0% of parking spaces are filled. Because of limited use of shared parking, even these exemplary developments do not achieve their full potential. At the overall peak hour, parked cars would fill just 19.5%–69.4% of parking spaces if the developments were built to Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) standards. With one exception, peak parking demand is less than 60% of the parking supply guideline in the ITE Parking Generation manual. A sixth D, demand management (parking management), is mixed at the TODs studied. For one thing, there is a dearth of shared parking, though opportunities abound. Another area in which parking policies are not always smart is in bundled residential parking. At some TODs, a parking space/permit comes with each apartment whether the renters want it and use it or not. Such parking is effectively free. A third area in which parking policies are not always smart is in free commercial parking, the counterpart of bundled residential parking.

Problem, research strategy, and findings A growing number of planning researchers and practitioners argue for a shift from mobility-centered transportation planning to an accessibility-focused one. Accessibility is a compelling concept that has proven more difficult to operationalize than mobility, which helps to explain why so many accessibility metrics have been developed for urban research and planning practice. To assess the state of these metrics, we reviewed 54 of them in light of their theoretical basis, data requirements, units of analysis, travel modes and trip purposes accounted for, and potential applications to planning practice. We also reviewed the substantial literature on accessibility measurement and interviewed planning practitioners who are applying accessibility metrics in practice. We find that accessibility theory and measurement has advanced more rapidly than applications in practice. However, a new generation of tools is emerging that may accelerate the move to accessibility planning. Although many of the measures focus on a single travel mode, the number of multimodal metrics is growing. Most of the measures are designed for regional-scale planning and scenario evaluation; only a few to date are intended for project evaluation. Takeaway for practice The 54 accessibility metrics and tools we reviewed vary widely and none stands out as obviously superior for planning practice. Although most calculate the accessibility of places, and many do so reasonably well, we see the most promise in measures of the accessibility of travelers, which can then be aggregated for place-based analyses while still shedding light on how access can vary substantially across different types of travelers. The principal challenge to broadly deploying accessibility analyses in practice in the years ahead is in developing measures that meaningfully measure the many salient dimensions of access, have manageable data requirements, and are understandable to planners, public officials, and community members.

Different articles have discussed and debated the validity and importance of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-use methods. At times the wrong method has been used, and experts explain how a different method would provide better data. The beginning of this chapter provides an overview of key planning articles in this argument. It then summarizes articles that have discussed peer reviews and the impact factor of different planning journals. The rest of the chapter includes an overview of key articles about a variety of planning topics such as smart growth, transportation, urban design, land use, and climate change. The chapter finishes with an overview of all the planning journals with their impact factors, as well as other planning-related topics.

The structure and performance of industrial sectors of a region is an impelling factor in determining the growth of a region’s economy. In Bangladesh, a great heterogeneity in economic growth exists among different regions along with the administrative divisions. This study investigates the short run and long run spatio-temporal variation of regional economies of the six divisions of Bangladesh. Location Quotient and Shift share method have been employed with gross divisional product and gross domestic product at constant price for the year 1995-96 to 1999-2000 as parameter. The comparative analysis of the six divisions reveals that Fishing and Construction sector have been the most flourishing industries and Real Estate, Renting and Business activities has been lagging for all the six divisions during the timeframe. Barisal district is in economic malaise relative to the other divisions and hence requires special attention to be in pace of consistent economic growth. Journal of Bangladesh Institute of Planners, Vol. 8, Dec 2015, pp. 135-144

The level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission in Bangladesh is very low compared to other countries of the world but it is appallingly affected by the vulnerability of climate change. The emission of GHG from Bangladesh was 126.6 MtCO2eq (metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent per capita) in 2010 which accounted to 0 .3% of global total GHG emission. This study aims to identify the sources of GHGs from agriculture, forestry and livestock sector in Bangladesh and proposes some ideas to mitigate emission from these sources. Emission from flooded rice fields, enteric fermentation, manure management, burning of agriculture residues, biomass burning are some imperative sources of GHGs. The actions for mitigating GHG emission involve midseason drainage, off-season incorporation of rice straw, substituting urea with ammonium sulphate, replacement of roughage with concentrated feed, use of dome digester, tillage and residue management, practice of bio-fuel instead of fossil-fuels, high efficiency fertilizer application and artificial and participatory woodlot plantation. The proposals prefer bottom-up approaches incorporating all possible stakeholders and intend to reduce substantial quantity of GHGs from the specified sectors.