Relationships between ramp metering and sprawl

This paper explores impacts of ramp metering on urban land use. A regression-based transportation model is developed to capture changes in accessibility caused by ramp metering on a highway network. A Land Use Change Indicator (LUCI) model is modified to estimate how the spatial distribution of employment and housing would change in response to the redistributed accessibility in five hypothetical urban areas with various initial land use patterns. Accessibility will be improved in almost all areas in a city with ramp metering, but meters affect land use patterns in various ways depending on initial land use conditions. Ramp metering can exacerbate decentralization, but not necessarily sprawl.