Poster #116 - Urban highways are barriers to park use: Evidence from smartphone mobility data

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

The barrier effect refers to how transportation infrastructure such as highways, while facilitating the movement of people and goods at a regional scale, can fragment surrounding communities and hinder movement at a local scale. This phenomenon has attracted considerable attention due to its wide-ranging societal consequences, from fragmentation of social networks to reduced access to recreational opportunities. While the negative consequences arise only when physical barriers trigger changes in people’s behavior, existing assessments have emphasized potential indicators of behavioral response to barriers, such as modeled accessibility loss. This study offers a behavior-based assessment of barrier effects using large-scale smartphone mobility data. Origin-destination (OD) pairs were constructed between census block groups as origins and local parks as destinations in Phoenix metropolitan area in 2019. Euclidean, network distances and annual visit counts were computed and compared between pairs interrupted by major roads with those without interruption. Results show that interrupted OD pairs had substantially fewer park visits than those without interruption, with the largest decline observed for pairs interrupted by access-controlled highways. Notably, a substantial portion of this decline remained for most road types even after controlling for increased travel distance. These findings indicate that accessibility loss account for only part of the visit reduction, suggesting the role of psychological and perceptual factors. For transportation and urban planners, the results highlight the utility of mobility data to complement potential indicators for evaluating and mitigating road-induced barrier effects.

Author

• Youngjae Won, North Carolina State University
  Presenting Author