This report presents a blueprint for revitalizing specific neighborhoods within the Chicago urban area by focusing on the transit and rail networks already in place. It calls for investment in the places with the best chance …
Land Use
The Case for Moderate Growth in Vehicle Miles of Travel: A Critical Juncture in U.S. Travel Behavior Trends (Center for Urban Transportation Research, 2006)
Prepared for the USDOT, this report hypothesizes that the United States has reached a critical juncture in terms of national mobility trends and underlying socio-demographic conditions and travel behavior that will result in more moderate rates of annual vehicle miles of travel (VMT) growth in the future. However, slower VMT growth may not portend lower rates of congestion growth.
Complete Streets: We Can Get There from Here (ITE, 2008)
This report explains the Complete Streets movement and assesses ways to make urban thoroughfares more pedestrian and bike friendly without compromising existing automobile travel. Download the full report here.
Reinventing the Urban Interstate: A New Paradigm for Multimodal Corridors (TRB, 2011)
This report’s objectives are to evaluate the potential for rehabbing and rebuilding sections of interstate highways in urbanized areas to serve multimodal transportation facilities and to develop strategies to implement these plans. Download the full …
Making the Case for Transit: WMATA Regional Benefits of Transit (WMATA, 2011)
A November, 2011 report from Washington, DC makes the case for why transit is important to the region, and imagines what it would look like without transit. The WMATA web site gives a brief overview, and the …
SSTI Review of PennDOT's Smart Transportation (SSTI, 2011)
Smart Transportation is Pennsylvania DOT’s integrated response to the crisis of crumbling infrastructure, limited revenues to address it, and the need to better align transportation with community revitalization and sound land use policy. PennDOT was the first state program reviewed in detail by SSTI, and remains one of our prime examples of a thoughtful DOT wrestling with the challenges of fiscal austerity, sustainability, and system preservation. The review was done at the request of PennDOT to assess the effectiveness of its Smart Transportation program in integrating land use and transportation in its decision-making and to identify areas of opportunity to advance the Smart Transportation agenda.
Moving Cooler (Urban Land Institute, 2009)
Third of the three studies, and the most expansive, as it looks at both built environment policies and pricing. Read more here.
The High Cost of Free Parking (Shoup, 2005)
Parking is a huge determinant of the amount of driving we do and the shape of the built environment, and past policy has been to remove price signals, creating excessive demand. Read more here.
Growing Cooler (Urban Land Institute, 2007)
Second of the three reports, more optimistic about potential policies. Read more here.
Driving and the Built Environment (TRB, 2009)
One of three recent reports (see two from ULI below) to look at land-use and other policy levers to reduce carbon emissions and other economic and social costs of driving. Read more here.