Land Use Change Guide Wishlist

[JoeJimFlood]

This discussion is for expressing desires for the Land Use Change scenario, including specifics on the scenario to test and what metrics to demonstrate the calculation of. It is proposed to increase the density of a neighborhood as that is a common contemporary travel model application. Suggestions from the April 7 consortium included demonstrating how to split zones and reallocating existing population as opposed to adding population. Some proposed metrics to demonstrate the calculate of include:

• Tour mode share
• Average tour length by purpose

Please submit any comments before the April 21 consortium meeting.

[sumitbindra]

Land-Use Scenario

Problem Statement

1. (TransLink preference) A new TOD development with an additional 2,000 residential units and 1,000 retail jobs (mixed land-use scenario) near a light rail station.

   • Do auto ownership rates for new households drop compared to similar households elsewhere in the region?
   • Does the model proportionally reflect the increased attraction for those zones?

2. What does student enrollment look like if a new school is opened? How does it impact escorting trips?

Components Impacted (Edit based on modeling system for testing)

1. Synthetic Population and Land Use Input Files – Land use changes on households and/or population requires regeneration of synthetic population to reflect the changes in households in the TOD development areas.

2. Destination Choice Size Terms – Land use changes directly affect the size terms in destination choice. The guide should walk through how employment and household counts flow into those size term expressions, and how a modeler can sanity-check that the model is actually "seeing" the land use change in destination choice behavior.

3. Mode Shift – In the TOD scenario, we should observe a shift towards active and transit mode and the guide should demonstrate how to summarize that.

4. Accessibility Logsums – These feed upstream into auto ownership and other submodels. A TOD scenario is a great case because improved accessibility near the station should be suppressing auto ownership for nearby households.

Outputs / Summary

1. VMT
2. Mode shift
3. Active mode share near the development
4. Auto ownership

[amsamimi]

A TOD scenario is a strong candidate, with a few considerations. For alternative land use, PopulationSim’s repop mode should be used to avoid synthesis noise affecting results elsewhere. In a typical TOD scenario, total population should remain constant, with growth in target zones offset by redistribution from other TAZs (e.g., via a global reduction factor). Maintaining total population is important for comparability. While not currently supported in ActivitySim, it would be useful to enable or document a way to enforce population totals at the TAZ level, since PopulationSim controls households but not population.