Principal Investigator: Dr. Richard Watts (Transportation Research Center)
Funding Agency: US DOT
Vermont faces significant obstacles to improving transportation system efficiency. The literature on rural transportation efficiency, combined with Vermonters current travel behavior and rural land settlement patterns suggest that State initiatives to increase overall transportation system efficiency will require bold and innovative steps.
Changing land use settlement patterns will have the single largest long-term impact on improving the efficiency of the overall transportation system. As mentioned in the introduction, if access is the goal, not mobility or miles of travel, then the most efficient system will have people living closer to the services and destinations they wish to access -- therefore meeting their needs with fewer (or shorter) trips.