A technology crucial to better coupling of land use and transportation planning is that of the geographic information system (gis). Because few documented practical applications of this technology have been developed, the planning support branch of fhwa's office of environment and planning, with the transportation planning division ofthe maryland-national capital park and planning commission (m-ncppc) in montgomery county, maryland, conducted a 3-month case study examining m-ncppc's application of the gis spatial analysis system (spans) software to its transportation planning activities. This case study comprises one module within fhwa's gis/video imagery demonstration project 85. Spans was used to disaggregate the county's traffic analysis zones (tazs) into smaller subzone components to produce finer-grained modeling data. The primary goal was to compare current andplanned housing and employment with prescribed development ceilings. This activity permits creation of future scenarios based on the amount of remaining legally developable land, as well as the future demand for transportation by mode (automobile, bus, rail, walking, bicycle, etc.). The results indicate that using gis-produced disaggregate socioeconomic data with travel demand modeling techniques improves the planner's ability to model both trip generation and modal choice. Further work by planners and gis software developers alike will expand the application of the gis well into the future. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1305, Finance, planning, programming, economic analysis, and land development 1991.
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