Relationship between non-auto travel and characteristics of the built environment and trip makers: Empirical analysis and case study

The main objective of this study is to show descriptively how the built environment and socio economic factors might relate to selecting the mode of travel, with special emphasis on transit and subway mode shares, in order to better understand how these factors might encourage residents to walk, bike, or take transit as substitutes for automobile travel. In order to achieve this, two different approaches are presented. First, the relationship between the variations of those factors and mode shares is examined for several areas within close proximity to the subway line network using the 2001 TTS database. In the second approach, the same relationship over the period of 1986 to 2001 is studied for one specific neighbourhood. Eventually, to better understand this relationship, visits to three of the chosen neighbourhoods were conducted to better identify some related built environment characteristics that are not readily available in the databases.