Developing trip generation rates and models for selected commercial and service land use types

Abstract

Changing social, economic and environmental conditions necessitates planning studies. Transportation demand created by different land use categories is known to vary considerably and therefore trip generation rates or functions of different land use categories have been developed for several countries in detail for estimating this demand (ITE, 2003). Trip generation rates/functions have not been developed for Turkish cities yet. Once these trip generation rates or functions are created for different land uses, it becomes possible to directly use them in various studies such as transportation planning in small urban areas, traffic operational studies and traffic impact analysis without performing household travel studies, site surveys, traffic counts, and so on, which require considerable time and financial resources. In Turkey, these types of studies are performed mostly according to the rates/functions which are presented in the Trip Generation Manual of ITE. The main goal of this study is to investigate and present the theoretical background of trip generation modeling and to develop such rates/functions for some selected commercial and service land use types. The data that have been used in this study have been collected by the Transportation Planning Directorate of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality1. The trip generation relationships are developed by using regression analysis and found to be statistically significant. As the next step, the trip generation rates and models for General Office Buildings and Hotels are developed. Afterwards, an example application showing the methodology to follow for performing a simple traffic impact analysis with the obtained results is presented and finally conclusions and recommendations for further research needed in this area is given.