Walking to the Station: the Effects of Street

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Walking to the Station: the Effects of Street WALKING TO THE STATION: THE EFFECTS OF STREET CONNECTIVITY ON WALKABILITY AND ACCESS TO TRANSIT A Dissertation Presented to The Academic Faculty by Ayse N. Ozbil In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Architecture Georgia Institute of Technology December 2010 WALKING TO THE STATION: THE EFFECTS OF STREET CONNECTIVITY ON WALKABILITY AND ACCESS TO TRANSIT Approved by: Dr. John Peponis, Advisor Dr. Catherine Ross College of Architecture School of City and Regional Planning Georgia Institute of Technology College of Architecture Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Michael Meyer Dr. Sonit Bafna School of Civil Engineering College of Architecture Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Susan Handy Dr. Darcin Akin Department of Environmental Science and City and Regional Planning Policy Gebze Institute of Technology University of California at Davis Date Approved: August 27, 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to my advisor, Prof. John Peponis, for his support and guidance in every aspect of the research described in this thesis. His creativeness and optimism always encouraged me and definitely proved substantial towards the completion of this work. I would like to thank Prof. Sonit Bafna for his insightful comments and constructive feedback. I always benefited from the fruitful discussions with him regarding data analysis and data interpretation during my research. I would like to acknowledge Prof. Catherine Ross, Prof. Michael Meyer, Prof. Susan Handy, and Prof. Darçın Akın for agreeing to serve on my committee and reading the entire thesis in such a tight time frame. I am even more grateful for their critical questions and insightful comments which helped me to clarify the key conclusions in this final draft. I would like to give my special thanks to all members of the Morphology Lab for their continuous encouragement and friendship. I owe thanks to Martin Scoppa for helping me with every aspect of GIS during the past years. I would also like to thank Prof. Sabir Khan and Prof. Douglas Allen for providing me funding hiring as their TAs during the past six years. Without this, I would not have been able to come this far. Finally, and most importantly, I would like to express my gratitude to Hamdi, Mehmet and my parents for their encouragement and understanding. This thesis would not exist without their unconditional support and love. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................... viii LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................... xi SUMMARY ............................................................................................................... xvii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH BACKGROUND ............................................................... 10 How do the 3Ds affect transit ridership? .................................................................... 13 Impacts of Density ................................................................................................. 13 Direct effects of density on ridership .................................................................. 14 Indirect effects of density on ridership................................................................ 17 Impacts of Land-Use .............................................................................................. 18 Impacts of Street Design and Street Network Design ............................................. 20 How do the 3Ds affect walking? ................................................................................ 25 Impacts of Density ................................................................................................. 25 Impacts of Land-Use .............................................................................................. 26 Impacts of Street Design and Street Network Design ............................................. 28 How do the 3Ds affect walking to/from transit? ......................................................... 32 Impacts of Density ................................................................................................. 32 Impacts of Land-use ............................................................................................... 33 Impacts of Street Design and Street Network Design ............................................. 33 How do the 3Ds affect walking distances to/from transit? .......................................... 34 iv Impacts of Density ................................................................................................. 35 Impacts of Land-Use .............................................................................................. 36 Impacts of Street Design and Street Network Design ............................................. 37 Concluding comments regarding the literature ........................................................... 42 CHAPTER 3: ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK ............................................................. 47 Case Context and Data Inputs .................................................................................... 47 2001-2002 Regional On-Board Transit Survey ....................................................... 47 Street Network Data ............................................................................................... 48 Land-Use Data ....................................................................................................... 49 2000 Census Data .................................................................................................. 49 Demographics ........................................................................................................ 50 Transit Service Features ......................................................................................... 50 Measures of Street Connectivity............................................................................. 51 Standard Measures of Connectivity describing the average properties of areas ... 51 Measures of walking catchment areas and route directness in the planning literature............................................................................................................. 54 Syntactic descriptions of street systems .............................................................. 54 Syntactic measures and standard measures of street networks ............................ 59 Segment-based Measures of Connectivity .......................................................... 60 Transcription of Travel Data ...................................................................................... 68 Discrepancies in the Data ....................................................................................... 69 CHAPTER 4: SPATIAL TYPOLOGIES OF MARTA RAIL STATIONS ACCORDING TO GIS-BASED ANALYSES ....................................................................................... 74 v CHAPTER 5: STREET CONNECTIVITY AND WALKING TO/FROM TRANSIT .... 95 Walking as transit access/egress mode choice ............................................................ 95 Modeling walking as transit access/egress mode choice ........................................... 102 Bivariate regression analysis ................................................................................ 104 Multivariate regression analysis ........................................................................... 109 CHAPTER 6: STREET CONNECTIVITY AND DISTANCES WALKED TO/FROM TRANSIT .................................................................................................................... 139 Trip Distances.......................................................................................................... 139 Modeling walking distances ..................................................................................... 149 Bivariate regression analysis ................................................................................ 149 Stepwise and Multivariate regression analysis ...................................................... 155 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS.................................. 163 Outline of findings ................................................................................................... 163 Surrounding street connectivity ............................................................................ 164 Station location .................................................................................................... 164 Walking distances ................................................................................................ 166 Land-use and population density .......................................................................... 168 Limitations .............................................................................................................. 169 Implications ............................................................................................................. 171 APPENDIX A: The Effects of Street Configuration on Transit Ridership .................... 173 APPENDIX B: Modeling street connectivity and pedestrian movement according to standard GIS street network representations
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