ABSTRACT

The debate over the importance of land use planning measures in reducing transport emissions and energy use (see Newman and Kenworthy, 1989; Gordon et al., 1991; Newman and Kenworthy, 1992) has highlighted a good deal of uncertainty about the characteristics of intra-urban travel behaviour and of its determinants, and also a relative lack of empirical research into the issue. This chapter assesses the importance to intraurban travel behaviour of accessibility and focuses on accessibility to local facilities and services. Such a focus has been given recent importance by the endorsement in Planning Policy Guidance 13: Transport (Departments of the Environment and Transport, 1994) of neighbourhood planning, integrating both housing and service provision, as a way of reducing the demand for travel and of encourging environmentally friendly forms of travel. The issue is also important because accessibility is likely to be particularly important for the sorts of discretionary (non-work) trips made to such facilities. After a review of the existing literature on the topic, the chapter reports the results of some empirical research based on new urban developments in Avon.