Overview of an international study to compare models and evaluate land-use and transport policies

This paper is the last of a series published in Transport Reviews describing the results obtained from Phase 2 of the International Study Group on Land-Use/Transport Interaction (ISGLUTI). In this second phase some interactive models were applied to several cities, and some cities examined by several models, to enable a rigorous comparative evaluation of the various models to be carried out. The paper draws together the main findings of the study, commenting on the performance of the models, looks particularly at the impacts of transport and land-use policies on the cities examined, and discusses the lessons learnt. The act of applying the models to completely different areas proved to be a significant test of the models, and further highlighted their particular strengths and weaknesses, taking account of the ease of transferring to different cities. The study identified those policies where the interaction between land use and transport was particularly strong and those where it was surprisingly weak and showed how the interaction over the longer term could modify the initial impacts. The results have shown how the effects of policies depend on the size and characteristics of the city to which they are being applied. The paper concludes that the more exacting tests of Phase 2 have demonstrated more clearly than hitherto how useful the models are for particular tasks and have given important insights into the impacts of the particular policies tested.