What to Expect in 2030: The Impacts of Fuel Price and Fuel Economy on Land Use and Transportation

Abstract

The significant role of the transportation sector on land use, socioeconomic development and environment has led to new policies and regulations in the United States (US) that require planning agencies to integrate these additional aspects to be included in their transportation planning processes. This led to integration of macroeconomic, land use and environmental development models with long range transportation planning models. Integrating land use and transportation models in particular receive increased attention due to the significant relation between land use patterns and transportation. The cost of travel, which depends highly on fuel prices, can have a significant impact on the allocation of land uses, the amount of travel, the modes chosen for travel and the routes drivers select in a region. With the volatility of energy prices over the past several decades, the growing instability of energy supply both domestic and foreign, and ever growing demand, it is difficult to predict what fuel prices will be in the future. Reducing demand for fuel through advanced vehicle and fuel technologies by increasing energy efficiency and fuel economy have been one of the strategies to tackle with this problem. However, the market penetration of such advanced technologies in the future remains uncertain. To begin to grapple with such uncertainty, planners must understand the potential future impacts of energy prices. With knowledge of these impacts, better planning can be achieved to accommodate the likely outcomes. This paper investigates the impacts of increased fuel prices on future transportation system performance as well as travel behavior utilizing an integrated land use and transportation model. The developed scenarios build on national macro-economic forecasts of changes in household and employment allocations with future transportation network improvements and modeled in a multi-state integrated land use and transportation model for year 2030 in the Capital Megaregion area. The scenarios are conducted to measure the impacts of different fuel price levels on land use and travel patterns. As past research suggests, high fuel prices yield increases in fuel economy. Therefore, the scenarios are designed such that both the impacts of fuel prices and resulting vehicle fuel economy (or vehicle mileage) on land use and travel behavior are captured. These scenarios can aid in understanding the issues regarding the rebound effect of increased fuel economy on travel. The analysis is conducted utilizing a modeling system that couples a four-step travel demand model exogenously with a land use model. The model results are analyzed compared to a baseline scenario considering various systemwide measures such as vehicle miles traveled, congested lane miles and emissions. The results show that increased fuel prices and fuel economy have a significant impact on land use and travel patterns. Increased fuel prices lead to a denser land use pattern and a reduction in automobile mode share and vehicle miles traveled even though fuel economy increases. However, the reduction is less pronounced if fuel economy increases significantly.