Studies: mixed-use, walkable development alleviates traffic

New Urban News Article with images, graphs, tables, sidebar, 9/1/2008

New research could lead to more favorable regulatory treatment of projects that generate fewer car trips.

New urbanists have long contended that mixed-use projects are treated unfairly by the transportation-engineering establishment. The “trip generation rates” promulgated by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) fail to recognize that when offices, retail, housing, and other uses are brought together in walkable settings, people may drive substantially less.

ITE’s guidelines have almost certainly been costing new urbanist developers money — in unnecessarily high payments for traffic mitigation and roadway improvements. They have also made it harder for some projects to win the required approvals.

Within the next couple of years, this may change. Three important investigations, each with a somewhat different thrust, have recently been either completed or under way. Their purpose: to determine how large a traffic reduction is achieved by mixed-use or transit-oriented development (TOD). The results, it is hoped, will cause governments to assess the traffic impact of such projects more favorably — and will create more of an incentive for new urbanist development.