ABSTRACT
Introduction Any discussion of rural land-use change in the United States since World War II must recognize the ascendance of privately owned cars, trucks, and more recently, minivans and sport utility vehicles (collectively know as light-duty vehicles). In fact, much of the current concern and discussion about changes in rural land use cannot be thought about separately from the use of private, light-duty vehicles. The great expansion in private, light-duty vehicle use (described below) has taken place in the context of large technological advances in vehicle safety, performance, and value. North Americans have also become wealthier and can afford to purchase more private, personalized transportation services. Early economic theory on the economics of land use employed monocentric models to recognize the tradeoff between location, travel costs (monetary and commuting time to a central business district) and land rent gradients (Alonso 1964; Muth 1969). These theories predict decentralization in response to lower transportation costs. In their 1995 book, At Road’s End, Carlson et al. argue that the federal highway program, more dramatically than any other single public policy, has changed the sense of place in urban, suburban and rural communities. They argue that new roads open land to development, alter the environment, create congestion and degrade the quality of life that the new roads were meant to improve. Giuliano (1996) maintains that our current state of decentralization was not an accident, but the result of a confluence of government support for the federal interstate highway system, policies that have kept car and fuel prices low, federal tax and mortgage policies that favor suburban development, and policies that have enabled suburban residents to avoid the social and fiscal problems of the inner city. In an even stronger statement, Hansen (1992) argues that our current transportation system, based on and designed largely for the automobile, has been systematically subsidized in a way that produces a more dispersed settlement pattern than would have otherwise evolved. Regardless of the direction of causality – whether (underpriced) private vehicle use spurs low density development, or whether the demand for low density development (the result of attitudes, lifestyles and wealth) encourages people to drive – the relationship between land-use change and private vehicles continues to
be interwoven. Economic modeling of rural land-use change must take into account these complex relationships. This chapter examines the economic interactions of light-duty vehicle transportation and land-use patterns.1 These interactions are complex, not onedirectional. Recognition of these interactions is essential for understanding the limitations and ability of public policy to shape rural land-use change via transportation regulation. It warrants emphasis to note that there are important differences between the potential for public policy to influence rural, as opposed to urban, land-use change. In urban areas, transportation systems are highly developed and new transportation projects and policies are likely to have more limited impacts.2 Vehicle Population and Use Aggregate Vehicle Use The availability of affordable, private light-duty vehicle transportation and a growing interstate highway system were important historical factors affecting landuse change in the United States. In 1950, the U.S. population of 152 million people used 43 million cars and trucks to drive 458 million miles. By 1999, the U.S. population had grown to 272 million, driving 2.7 billion miles in 209 million vehicles (Davis 2001, Table 11.1). This represents an increase in per-capita driving from roughly 3,029 to 9,713 miles per year (see Figure 4.1). While the population increased by 78 per cent, the number of miles driven increased by 468 per cent, and the number of vehicles in use grew by 377 per cent. This vehicular traffic was made possible by extensive road construction that has grown to constitute 3.9 million miles (U.S. Department of Transportation 2000) and a vehicle ownership rate that almost tripled from 0.28 to 0.77 vehicles per capita (Davis 2001, Table 11.2). Trip Decomposition Contrary to popular belief, this tremendous increase in driving is not due solely to increases in the daily commute to work in single-occupancy vehicles; the journey to or from work represented only about 27 per cent of all household vehicle-miles in 1995 (Davis 2001, Table 11.9). Nonetheless, in the daily commute, the use of alternatives to single-occupancy private vehicles used has fallen. U.S. census data shows that the percentage of workers who carpooled dropped from 19.7 per cent to 11.2 per cent, and the percentage of workers using public transit declined from 6.4 per cent to 5.2 per cent between 1980 and 2000 (Davis 1999, Table 11.13; Davis 2001, Table 11.14). The remainder of household vehicle travel is for family and personal business, shopping, recreation, and vacations (see Figure 4.2).
