Kelcie Ralph

Multimodal Millennials? The Four Traveler Types of Young People in the United States in 2009

Are young Americans embracing a mix of travel modes? This article identifies four types of travelers to answer that question. Drivers travel almost exclusively by automobile; Long-distance Trekkers drive great distances; Multimodals use a mix of modes; and the Car-less rely on nonautomobile modes and make very few trips. Multimodals were exceedingly rare and eight in ten Millennials used an automobile for nearly every trip as a Driver or Long-distance Trekker. By incorporating multiple facets of travel into a single variable, this research provides valuable information for addressing twenty-first-century policy challenges such as encouraging multimodality and alleviating transportation disadvantage.

A Taste for Transit? Analyzing Public Transit Use Trends among Youth

A Taste for Transit? Analyzing Public Transit Use Trends among Youth Anne E. Brown, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Brian D. Taylor UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Kelcie Ralph Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University Carole Turley Voulgaris UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Abstract In the past decade, there has been much talk about a decline in driving among youth. This study examined whether this decline is associated with an increased reliance on public transit. To address this issue, 2001 and 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) data were used to analyze the relationship between age and transit use. Findings indicate that although young adults are more likely to ride transit than older adults, transit use among youth can be explained largely by (1) life cycle factors common among young people but unlikely to persist as they age, (2) higher levels of transit use among non-whites, who are disproportionately young, and (3) locational factors such as living in densely-developed neighborhoods that may or may not continue as young people age. Therefore, whereas transit habits established early in life may persist as young adults age, the data examined here suggest that such an outcome is far from assured. Keywords: Millennials, transit use, travel behavior Introduction Over the past decade, there has been much talk about a decline in auto travel among youth. Per-capita driving in the U.S. has dipped, with higher than average declines among teens and young adults (or Millennials, those born between 1980 and 2004), prompting some observers to conclude that youth are “ditching” cars for a more multimodal lifestyle that includes a greater reliance on public transit among other non-auto modes (Ball 2014; Blumenberg et al. 2012; Davis, Dutzik, and Baxandall 2012; Malcolm 2014; McDonald 2015). For example, a recent report published by the TransitCenter (2014) concludes, “The Millennial generation seems to be defying its sheltered, suburban upbringing by delaying the acquisition of a driver’s license and choosing transit. Meanwhile, Baby Boomers, who grew up using transit and Journal of Public Transportation, Vol. 19, No. 1, 2016 49

Travel and the Built Environment: Insights Using Activity Densities, the Sprawl Index, and Neighborhood Types

There are many ways to evaluate the built environment, including measures of observable individual characteristics (such as activity density), continuous composite measures (such as the sprawl index), and categorically measured variables (such as neighborhood types). However, a systematic comparison of how well each of these three measurement types captures the influence of the built environment on travel behavior has not yet been undertaken. This lack presents a quandary for both researchers and practitioners who seek to quantify and describe the effects of the built environment on travel behavior. This paper assesses whether continuous, composite, or categorical measures provide more information and better-fitting models compared with measures of observable individual characteristics across four travel behaviors: vehicle miles traveled, walk trips, transit trips, and trip length. For each travel variable, four multivariate regression models were estimated with various measures of the built environment: activity density, sprawl index, neighborhood type, and combined sprawl index and neighborhood type. Both the sprawl index and the neighborhood-type models outperformed the activity density model. Moreover, a combined model with both the sprawl index and neighborhood types provided the best fit for all four travel behavior variables. These results suggest that both continuous and categorical composite variables provide unique and complementary information about how the built environment influences travel behavior. These findings underscore the importance of researchers’ decisions on how to represent the built environment quantitatively in models, because measurement decisions influence the understanding of how the built environment affects travel behavior.