Impacts of highway induced land use changes on transport demand

Abstract

Highway investment appraisals usually do not account for land use changes triggered by the investment. However, previous studies argue that new highways promote sprawling land use development associated with greater car dependency and increased motorized transport demand. This paper aims to increase the knowledge of how land use changes resulting from new highways impact transport demand. We model induced transport demand from seven highway investments, assuming both fixed and dynamic land use between the build and the no build scenarios. When land use is allowed to change, relocation of population is estimated with a regression model building on existing dynamics between population density and job accessibility. Our results indicate that land use changes resulting from highway investments impact induced transport demand. Highways that provide substantial travel time savings near urban areas are found to generate most induced transport demand from land use changes. However, induced demand from land use changes constitute a modest proportion of total induced demand resulting from the highways.