Description: TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 582: Best Practices to Enhance the Transportation-Land Use Connection in the Rural United States explores how different types of rural communities can integrate land use and transportation planning. The report also highlights programs and investment strategies that are designed to support community development and livability in rural areas while providing adequate transportation capacity.

This report presents guidance on how best to integrate land use and transportation in rural communities. The study highlights programs and investment strategies that support community development and livability while providing adequate transportation capacity.

Rural communities throughout the United States are facing a wide and complex range of challenges that both affect and are affected by the transportation system. These include economic shifts away from traditional employment in local farming and manufacturing toward industries such as agribusiness and tourism; changing demographics such as rising percentages of elderly residents or new levels of racial and ethnic diversity; rapid growth in some rural areas and population decline in others; and a lack of adequate capacity and/or commitment to engage the public in transportation and land use planning. These trends are further complicated by funding challenges associated with operating, maintaining, and building transportation infrastructure.

Although urban areas may be facing many of the same or similar issues, the presence of such challenges in a rural setting poses a unique set of circumstances that requires a distinctly different approach. Although abundant research findings exist on strategies and measures to address the effects of growth and development on transportation systems and services in urban and metropolitan areas, there has been little corresponding research to address how rural communities can work with transportation agencies to set and reach mutual goals for livability and mobility.

Surveys for this project indicated that the number one challenge for rural communities is to provide access within the community to destinations such as jobs, shops, services, education, and healthcare. The particular type of accessibility need for each community varies based on the communityï¾’s particular setting and economic base. For example, exurban communities are primarily concerned with providing access to jobs in adjacent urban centers; destination communities focus on bringing visitors into the community and providing access to tourist destinations; and production communities either attempt to improve accessibility between local products and their markets or to diversify the local economy. Other frequently cited challenges include maintaining or improving water and air quality, improving driver safety, protecting open space and environmentally sensitive lands, and providing access between the community and destinations around the larger region.

Best practices and strategies for achieving these results within various types of communities fall into three major activities:
1. Set the regional framework for where and how development should occur, through practices such as ﾕ Growth management and preservation strategies to guide development into suitable locations and ﾕ Regional access management strategies promoting access to designated development areas as well as discouraging unwanted rural development.

2. Improve local accessibility to daily needs such as jobs, shopping, services, and health care, through practices such as ﾕ Development standards and plans to promote mixed-use, walkable community centers; and ﾕ Transportation investments focused on improving street connectivity, pedestrian and bicycle facilities, and transit service to community focal points.

3. Enhance community design, through practices such as ﾕ Context-sensitive roadway design techniques that complement natural and built environments; and ﾕ Local access management and community design strategies, particularly along key commercial corridors.

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More Information: onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_rpt_582.pdf