FACTORS INFLUENCING COMMUTE AND SOCIAL/RECREATIONAL WALKING TRIPS: EVIDENCE FROM 41 CORE-BASED STATISTICAL AREAS IN THE UNITED STATES

Back to Page Authors: Sirajum Munira, Ipek Sener, A. K. M. Abir, Yunlong Zhang

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Keywords: walking trips, weekday vs weekend travel, National Household Travel Survey, USA, multi-source data

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Abstract: This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on nonmotorized travel and examines the question of how the synergistic character of neighborhoods relates to its walking trips for different purposes in the United States. The study is based on a rich set of publicly available databases across 41 core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) in the United States, including the 2017 National Household Travel Survey data, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Smart Location Database and Walkability Index dataset, 2012–2016 American Community Survey, TIGER/Line data and National Climatic Data Center weather dataset. Using more than 100 explanatory variables, three ordinary least squares regression models were developed to explore work purpose walking trips on weekday and nonwork purpose walking trips on both weekdays and weekends. The results revealed the importance of several variables in examining the walking trips within the CBSAs related to socioeconomic, weather, and built environment features. The findings also indicated significant variations across purposes and day of the week, underscoring the need to investigate them separately. Moreover, all types of walking trip shares relate to more sociodemographic variables than the built environment and weather-related factors, highlighting the potentially more important role of personal factors for walking trip share than environmental ones.

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