Evaluation of sketch-level VMT quantification tools : strategic growth council grant programs evaluation support project.

Details

• Creators:
  Lee, Amy ; Fang, Kevin ; Handy, Susan
• Corporate Creators:
  University of California, Davis. Institute of Transportation Studies
• Corporate Contributors:
  National Center for Sustainable Transportation (NCST)
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Vehicle miles of travel
  • Greenhouse gases
  • Exhaust gases
  • Sketch planning
  • Emissions reduction
  • Air quality management
  • Travel demand management VMT
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  California;United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  National Center for Sustainable Transportation (NCST) (UTC)
• Abstract:
  The State of California has enacted ambitious policies that aim to reduce the state’s greenhouse ; gas (GHG) emissions. Some of these policies focus on reducing the amount of driving ; throughout the state, measured in vehicle miles traveled (VMT), given that transportation, ; primarily automobile use, is the largest single source of California’s GHG emissions.1 To ; encourage local plans and projects that reduce VMT, California has established several grant ; programs to which local jurisdictions may apply. ; These grant programs have generated a need for methods to estimate the potential VMT – and ; thus GHG – impacts of proposed planning efforts, land development projects, and ; transportation projects. A range of VMT estimation methods are available for use by funding ; applicants. Regional travel demand models, for example, are used to estimate the VMT and ; GHG implications of alternative scenarios in the development of federally-required regional ; transportation plans and state-required sustainable communities strategies. These models are ; resource intensive, however, requiring modeling expertise and sometimes many days to ; complete a single analysis. To fill the need for less resource-intensive methods more ; appropriate for localized plans and individual projects, upwards of a dozen “sketch” tools have ; been developed. ; These sketch tools vary in their approach and appropriateness for the breadth of development ; projects and project locations in the state. Practitioners are often unsure as to which method ; to use for a particular project and have little information to guide their choice. In this report we ; compare and evaluate VMT estimation tools across a sample of land use projects. We compare ; the results from different tools for each project, consider the applicability of methods in ; particular contexts and for different types of projects, and assess data needs, relative ease of ; use, and other practical considerations.
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• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/32750/dot_32750_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.77 MB]
• Collection(s):
  University Transportation Centers ; US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:70b8c7d7a2100075c1060bad980ac90de0e8568c36044ab8cbfc7fefba211205712821f76b3faff9c86838feb8ec97689900631798413bf6c222ba4f87a1a8bb