Planners are increasingly viewing land use policies as a way to manage transportation demand. Yet the evidence on the link between land use and travel behavior is inconclusive. This paper uses travel diary data for Southern California residents to examine the demand for non-work travel. Both non-work automobile trips and non-work miles travelled by car are modelled as a function of individual sociodemographic variables and land use characteristics near the person's place of residence. The land use variables are rarely statistically significant, and diagnostic tests suggest that land use (and thus residential location choice) is endogenous to non-work travel. The implications are twofold. The link between land use and non-work travel is weak at best, at least for the sample studied here, and future research should treat residential location and thus nearby land use characteristics as endogenous in models of travel behavior.

Planners are increasingly viewing land use policies as a way to manage transportation demand. Yet the evidence on the link between land use and travel behavior is inconclusive. This paper uses travel diary data for Southern California residents to examine the demand for non-work travel. Both non-work automobile trips and non-work miles travelled by car are modelled as a function of individual sociodemographic variables and land use characteristics near the person's place of residence. The land use variables are rarely statistically significant, and diagnostic tests suggest that land use (and thus residential location choice) is endogeneous to non-work travel. The implications are twofold. The link between land use and non-work travel is weak at best, at least for the sample studied here, and future research should treat residential location and thus nearby land use characteristics as endogeneous in models of travel behavior.

I arrived here at the UC Transportation Center just nine months ago. A former lawyer and aspiring writer, I had only a layman's knowledge of transportation systems, mostly based on my personal experiences. 

Growing up in Hilo, Hawaii, I thought traffic jams meant having to circle the parking lot twice to find a space. No one worried about ozone or took cars in for smog checks. Every desirable destination - shopping malls, movie theaters, beaches, even downtown - was within a few minutes' drive.