Kathleen Deutsch

Development of Indicators of Opportunity-Based Accessibility

“Accessibility,” defined as the ease (or difficulty) with which opportunities for activity can be reached from a given location, can be measured with the cumulative amount of opportunities from an origin within a given amount of travel time. These indicators can be used in regional planning and modeling efforts to integrate land use and travel demand, and an attempt should be made to calculate these indicators for the smallest geographic area. The primary objective of this paper is to illustrate the creation of realistic space-sensitive and time-sensitive block-level accessibility indicators to track the availability of opportunities. These indicators support the development of an activity-based travel demand model by Southern California Association of Governments to provide second-by-second and parcel-by-parcel modeling and simulation. The indicators also provided the base information for mapping opportunities of access to 15 types of industries at different times during a day. The indicators and their maps were defined for the entire region of Southern California through largely available data that included the Census Transportation Planning Package, Dun & Brad-street postprocessed data, detailed highway networks and travel times from the four-step regional models, and arrival and departure times of workers by industry.

Understanding Place Through Use of Mixed-Method Approach

With the increased application of the activity-based approach comes the inherent need to incorporate more details regarding behavior. This need for detail has, in turn, created the need for a deeper understanding of, and theoretical basis for, behavior; data collection and analysis methods that handle more behavioral detail are also needed. Therefore, the use of qualitative and mixed-method approaches in travel behavior has received increased attention over the past few decades. In this paper, quantitative and qualitative methodologies are discussed and applied to data collected in Santa Barbara, California, to measure peoples’ attitudes about their sense of place. Quantitative and qualitative methods are applied, first through a factor analysis and, second, through a qualitative analysis of text from an open-ended question; the results of the two methods are compared. Four factors are derived: the aesthetics and atmosphere, the family- and community-oriented nature of the place, the negative aspects of the place, and the self-benefit of the patronage. The findings of the factor analyses are compared and combined with a text analysis to reach a greater understanding of sense of place and behavior. In addition, unique themes arising from the text analysis are discussed, including parking availability and cost, shopping variety, and the urban environment. Theoretical developments and implications for future research are discussed in light of the analysis findings.