Traffic Safety
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Traffic Safety |
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city government news & events about apple valley employment resources |
Departments >Traffic Safety > Traffic Volume | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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How
many "trips" does the Have your neighbors and their teenagers transformed your once quiet residential street into something akin to Grand Central Station? You aren’t alone in your concern about the amount of traffic in your neighborhood. In fact, you might be surprised at the number of trips your own residence generates. Transportation planners are also interested in the number of trips you and your neighbors generate. Each time a vehicle arrives at or departs from your residence, one "trip" has been generated. Going to work in the morning counts as one trip and returning home in the evening counts as another. Transportation planners combine the average household trips with similar information from other land uses such as offices, shopping centers, and entertainment and recreational facilities to get an overall picture of traffic system needs. That information is utilized to project how many lanes our roads must have to provide free flowing traffic. National study averages are often used to determine trip generation. While the average home generates slightly more than 10 trips per day, studies reveal wide variations in the actual number of trips. Homes in senior citizen housing developments can average as low as three trips per day, while residences in active family neighborhoods can generate as many as 20 trips per day. Homes constructed many miles from shopping centers generate fewer trips than homes in close proximity to shopping centers. Why? Because residents further away from grocery stores and shopping malls are more likely to do their shopping on the way home from work or on their lunch hour. A single trip may serve many purposes: work, shopping, and even entertainment. The increasing popularity of VCR’s, big-screen TV, backyard pools, and other home amenities affect the number of evening and weekend trips generated by each house. The use of mail-order shopping results in more trips during the day for deliveries, but fewer trips in the evening for shopping. Changes in technology, average family size, entertainment, and shopping habits all impact the average number of trips generated by a residence. Smaller families generate fewer trips, but the expanding number of women in the workforce and multi-vehicle families increase the number of trips. Transportation planners pay attention to long-term impacts caused by these societal changes in order to provide accurate projections on the need for transportation systems. If you don’t think your household generates an average of 10 trips per day, try counting for a week. Keep track of your visitors and don’t forget deliveries and services like pizza, mail, newspapers, and trash pickup. Content updated on: 03-May-2004
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