The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) has developed an accessibility-based sketch planning model for quick-hit analysis of travel behaviors, including mode choice, non-motorized travel, average trip length, trip distribution, and ride-hailing service utilization throughout the Boston region. The sketch model responds to the need for reliable planning-level insight into urban travel behaviors that are sensitive to land use, urban design, and travel costs with minimal reliance on complex regional travel models. It utilizes multimodal accessibility as the overarching analysis framework, linking travel behavior to the effectiveness with which different travel modes (walking, driving, public transit, e.g.) connect households, jobs, schools, and shopping.
The sketch accessibility model was developed and piloted as part of MAPC’s analysis of the West Station Area Transit Study. This site provides an overview of the core components of multimodal accessibility analysis, a walkthrough of the modeling steps piloted in the West Station area, examples of model outputs for comparison across hypothetical land use and transportation scenarios, detailed model documents, and links to toolkit support.
The map below shows the West Station study area and model extents. The “focus area” is the local area where land use and network changes are envisioned. The “window area” is a buffer around the focus area approximating the limits for walking and biking trips coming from or going to the focus area. Non-motorized trips are modeled using fine-grained land use (blocks) and network (all streets) data in the focus and window areas. The “remainder area,” all modes are modeled using coarser geographic resolution (regional TAZs and travel newtorks).