Avigail Ferdman

Light Rail Transit systems are currently being promoted as a means for reducing car pollutants, congestion and enhancing community liveability. Understanding the overall demand for daily travel is essential for obtaining a clearer picture of transit behaviour trends, which are derived from the overall demand, among other factors.

This study aims at exploring trip trends through the investigation of land use attributes, namely density and diversity. The ability to affect the daily trip rates in the metropolitan region of Tel Aviv in general, and around the proposed light rail stations in particular, will be investigated. It is hypothesized that dense and mixed land uses will produce and attract less motorized trips, since some of the trips will be carried out in non-motorized modes.

The methodology applied consists of estimating new trip generation models that include land use variables, alongside the commonly used socio-economic variables, and creating different land use scenarios to simulate various planning policies.

The findings suggest that proper inclusion of land use variables can play an important role in explaining daily trip rates, since density and diversity variables significantly affect trip attraction rates. Variables such as dependency ratio and intra-zonal workforce can explain some of the variation in trip rates. Mixed land use settings forecast higher trip rates than homogenous settings.

Previous studies showed that transit’s modal share is higher in dense and mixed-use areas. Based on the current findings, it is suggested to locate transit stations in mixed land use areas, and intensify land uses around them, to allow the system to capture a greater share of the motorized trips.