We examine the link between highways and urban development by employing both hedonic analysis and multiple sales techniques to study the impact of the construction of toll roads in Orange County, California, on house prices. Urban economic theory predicts that if highways improve accessibility,...

Living in suburbia, owning a house, and watching the kids play on a green lawn was the American dream as early as the 1800s. At first, mass transit was crucial to suburban life, with streetcars and rail lines providing access to new residential areas outside of cities. After World War II, as...

Transportation planners have traditionally considered land use policy to be outside their purview and have generally accepted existing (or proposed) land use policies and patterns as a given. That attitude changed, however, with the passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act...

The precise relationship between transportation and land use continues to elude us. It seems self-evident that transportation facilities and services have enormous effects on land use patterns. We've all observed developments occur around freeway interchanges, and we all know the history of...

I recently moved from Berkeley to Austin, the "Berkeley of Texas." Although there are similarities, and Austin is certainly as close to Berkeley as Texas gets, there are plenty of things I miss about Berkeley. I miss the hills and the bay. I miss good Chinese food and Thai food, Super Burritos,...

In this issue of ACCESS, we examine how land use considerations can improve transportation planning. Transportation planners have traditionally sought to maximize mobility by supplying better roads and common carriers, thus making it easier to move around. Seldom have they sought to improve the...

While urban form in general and density in particular are believed by many to significantly influence travel behavior, various recent studies have argued that the true determinants of travel patterns are attitudes rather than land use characteristics. This research builds on this notion and...