Project-level accessibility analysis for land-use planning

This article proposes an elasticity-based metric of accessibility that can enable project-level evaluation of land-development projects as an accessibility-based alternative to traffic-impact analysis. The metric is demonstrated for three projects in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. The metric is shown to be sensitive to the location of development and capable of distinguishing among the analyzed projects in accessibility terms. Where mobility-based evaluation tends to rank peripheral development highly, the proposed accessibility metric appropriately rates central development as contributing the most to regional accessibility even after accounting for the traffic delay it engenders.