Robert Steuteville of the New Urban Network delves into the report, which is written by frequent Planetizen contributor Todd Litman. Litman writes that "smart growth can provide large cumulative impacts":
"In automobile-dependent, sprawled locations virtually every adult resident owns an automobile and uses it for most travel, and average trip lengths are relatively long. In multi-modal, smart growth locations residents tend to own fewer vehicles, drive fewer annual miles, and rely more on alternative modes."
Steuteville focuses on real-world evidence of this from the report from Portland, Oregon:
"Neighborhoods with good transit and mixed use average 9.8 VMT/household/day. Neighborhoods with good transit but no mix of uses average 13.3 VMT/household/day. The rest of the region, with no mix of uses or good transit - mostly characterized by suburban sprawl - averages 21.8 VMT/household/day.
This difference - 55 percent less automobile use in mixed-use, transit-served neighborhoods compared to sprawl - is dramatic."
The full report is available here.
