Analyzing the Impacts of Microscale Urban Attributes on Travel: Evidence from Suburban Adelaide, Australia

Abstract

Metropolitan Adelaide in Australia is dominated by low-density suburbs with an extensive and large road supply, which brings with it car-dependent lifestyles that are ultimately unsustainable in the longer term. Changes are needed to make a city such as Adelaide less car-dependent toward a city that relies on more sustainable transport modes for its day to day urban travel needs. This paper presents the results from a comparative study of travel patterns among residents of four suburban residential areas in metropolitan Adelaide. Using existing datasets together with inventory data of urban environment characteristics from original fieldwork, this paper examines to what extent there are associations between various attributes of a particular urban location as they relate to travel behavior and household socio-economics. The findings derived from multinomial logit models show that suburban development pattern and design attributes can potentially create shifts in transport modal split suggesting that microscale urban features should be given more attention in transport policy making.