Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 6: The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand (2014) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 59-71
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From page 59... ...
59 This research project has created a package of tools, Impacts 2050, that have been designed to assist state DOTs, MPOs, and other transportation agencies in better coping with the effects of uncertainty in their longrange planning process. At the core of the package is the Impacts 2050 model, a spreadsheet-based, scenario-planning tool that is designed to assess the effects of various socio-demographic and other trends on longterm transportation outcomes and needs.
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From page 60... ...
60 The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand Not surprisingly, those future conditions are strongly defined by past trends. If those conditions change -- as the result of one key factor changing substantially, or multiple factors interacting more subtly -- the implications for the reality of the original forecasts may be dramatic.
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From page 61... ...
Relevance and Value of Impacts 2050 to Transportation Agencies 61 The challenge for state DOTs and MPOs is that they neither directly control many of the factors that define the assumptions that make up the long-range plans, nor have complete control over the prioritization of projects. For example: • Residential and employment growth assumptions are largely the result of both local development plans and exogenous forecasts.
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From page 62... ...
62 The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand decisions means that many of the key variables that would be essential to proper scenario planning are, for practical purposes, fixed, which greatly constrains the range of important options. However, it is reasonable to believe that one way to objectively visit and challenge this constraint is to provide credible evidence as to the impacts of future changes on transportation, economic development, and other key societal goals.
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From page 63... ...
Relevance and Value of Impacts 2050 to Transportation Agencies 63 suggestions, and eventually help craft the new plan. This plan development process could benefit from new tools in many ways, specifically the features of the Impacts 2050 methods, both in expanding the set of issues that can be examined, as well as in ways of communicating with participants.
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From page 64... ...
64 The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand In addition to incorporating Impacts 2050's capabilities more formally into the travel forecasting process, some less formal methods would also be beneficial. One such step would be identifying a set of key indicators that reflect key trends and committing to tracking those indicators.
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From page 65... ...
Relevance and Value of Impacts 2050 to Transportation Agencies 65 scenarios to control the boundaries of the land-use model and (2) show the relationship between land scarcity and how it is affecting the population dynamics (since with land-use models, there is no feedback on real-world socio-demographic variables, like employment)
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From page 66... ...
66 The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand Technology Triumphs (37.5 percent likely, 62.5 percent unlikely or no response) Only about half as many respondents felt that the Technology Triumphs scenario was as likely to happen as Momentum, but virtually all of those respondents felt that the impacts would be positive.
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From page 67... ...
Relevance and Value of Impacts 2050 to Transportation Agencies 67 and society would never allow it to happen, and would kick in investments and stimulus policies, and that technology would play a major role. Regardless of likelihood of occurrence, no respondent saw a positive impact from this scenario.
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From page 68... ...
68 The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand Clearly, a solid trend has been in place in the United States since World War II, exhibiting a steady increase in not only VMT alone, but also VMT per capita, with little perturbation from 1945 through 2005. During that time, annual VMT grew from 250 billion miles a year to more than 3 trillion miles -- more than a factor of 10 -- while population merely doubled.
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From page 69... ...
Relevance and Value of Impacts 2050 to Transportation Agencies 69 8.5 Challenges Facing State DOTs and MPOs This section provides some suggestions as to various ways that transportation agencies may respond to better cope with the uncertainties -- even some of the less desirable certainties -- of the future. Impacts 2050 was especially designed to assist this process by providing enhanced insight into the potential impacts of major trends.
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From page 70... ...
70 The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand to support plans and policies that expand multimodalism. As a challenge, their planning models -- if they exist -- are very highway oriented, making it difficult to evaluate or make the case for prioritizing multimodal approaches in plans, policies, and programs.
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From page 71... ...
Relevance and Value of Impacts 2050 to Transportation Agencies 71 • Present these findings to agency leadership and governing boards, and encourage discussion as to their nature and implications. • Investigate alternative trends and outcomes.
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