Trip Generation Models for Selected Land Uses in the West Bank

Trip generation is the first step of the four-step transportation planning process, which is mainly used for travel demand forecasting. This research investigates and provides models (trip generation rates and equations) for Residential, Office, and Retail land uses, which are considered as the major land uses in the West Bank; each land use was classified into three major classes. This study was conducted in accordance with the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) procedures and methodology in terms of sample size, independent variables, site selection, and procedures for estimating trip generation model, taking into consideration the specific characteristics of the local land uses. Special forms were designed to collect the required data about the developments and traffic counting. These forms were used by the researcher and well-trained surveying teams from all Palestinian cities. At least 6 samples were surveyed for each land use class. On the other hand, only one site was found for "Shopping Center", which is Plaza Mall in Al Bireh City. Therefore, for this class, the trip generation rate will be used in this study. Based on the analysis of the residential land use, the best independent variables that estimate trip generation are the number of persons and the number of occupied units. For office land use, the best independent variables that estimate trip generation are the number of employee and the occupied gross floor area. Based on the regression results of retail land use, the best independent variable that estimates trip generation is the occupied gross floor area. Pass-by trips were considered only for retail land use. As for the pass-by analysis, it is clear that there is an inverse proportional relationship between pass-by trips and the occupied GFA for large supermarket land use with R2 equals to 0.72, which is logical in the West Bank. The study recommended to use trip generation equation for models with R2 equal to 0.7 or greater. Otherwise, trip generation rates should be used. It is also recommended to adopt the mentioned methodology in this study for similar future studies and researches. Additionally, the study encourages other researchers to collect a new data in the future to increase the sample size so as to achieve higher accuracy regression results.