Streamlining the NEPA Process through Cooperative
Local-State-Federal Transportation and Land Use Planning
Robert A. Johnston and Mike McCoy
Dept. of Environmental Science and Policy
University of California
One Shields Ave.
Davis, CA 95616
530 582-0700
rajohnston@ucdavis.edu
mcmcoy@ucdavis.edu
and
Marjorie Kirn and Matthew Fell
Merced County Assoc. of Governments
389 W. 18th St.
Merced, CA 95340
209 723-3153
mkirn@mcag.cog.ca.us
mfell@mcag.cog.ca.us
November 15, 2003
For presentation at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting
Washington, D.C., January, 2004
Word count: 5,046 plus 7 figures.
Abstract:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, FHWA, and California DOT have initiated a
demonstration in California called Partnership for Integrated Planning. The purpose of
this program is to get early involvement from local, State, and Federal agency staff
people to help plan for transportation infrastructure, urban growth, and resource
protection together, rather than to only negotiate over permits for major infrastructure at
the project stage. We report on this demonstration project here. This project applies a
simple GIS-based urban growth model to evaluate a transportation plan and projects in
Merced County (pop. 211,000 in 2000). Our interviews with the agency participants
show that, in general, resource agency personnel have limited involvement with
transportation planning and transportation planners have limited knowledge of
environmental planning, and so they need to work out methods for identifying their
concerns for 20-year planning purposes. Planning for resource protection for a whole
county is quite different from arguing for maximum protection of resources at the project
scale. We review the early steps in building the model and acquiring datasets.
Introduction:
There has been considerable effort expended by Federal officials in the last decade to
streamline NEPA and other permitting procedures, to speed up project approval.
Generally, these efforts involve tiering project EISs off of Program EISs and coordinating
permit processes to run in parallel, rather than sequentially. California DOT (Caltrans)
has not only embraced this transition, but has also developed a wider vision of
transportation planning that acknowledges the influence of new facilities on land
development and tries to assess these effects at the plan and project level. As a result of
this policy change, Caltrans is trying to develop transportation planning methods that
include local, State, and Federal agencies together, so that agencies can agree on best
resource protection policies at the plan stage, so subsequent permitting can proceed more
rapidly, with the large problems avoided already.
Development of the Demonstration Project:
In July of 2000, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Region 9, the Federal
Highway Administration (FHWA), California Division, and Caltrans signed the Mare
Island Accord, which is an agreement developed “to support concerted, cooperative,
effective and collaborative work among the three agencies in the transportation and
environmental planning processes.” The Accord stipulates that “ Each agency will
incorporate the objective of this Partnership Agreement into their respective strategic
planning processes” and the agencies will assess the program annually. The agreement
provides that senior managers are to meet quarterly to review progress of the program; a
demonstration program will be developed that will devise new planning tools for
environmental planning and to speed up NEPA and Sec. 404 (wetlands) reviews of
projects; the agencies will revise the Regional Transportation Planning guidelines to
improve advanced planning for resource protection; and cumulative impacts are to be
given special consideration in planning.
In July of 2001 the agencies approved the demonstration project Memorandum of
Understanding with the Merced County Association of Governments (MCAG), which is
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a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) in the San Joaquin Valley. The San Joaquin
Valley is of special concern to resources agencies, because of rapid projected growth,
declining air quality, and many important habitat types and listed vertebrate species. The
goal of this demonstration is: “The Parties agree that transportation plans and projects
should be implemented in a timely manner that protect or restore the region’s
environment.” That is, the demonstration seeks methods for jointly engaging in
environmental planning and for streamlining subsequent permitting of facilities.
The specific objectives are to:
 Formulate a model regional transportation planning process
 Identify projects that avoid and/or minimize impacts on sensitive environmental
habitats, wetlands, and important agricultural lands.
 Develop a progressive public education and involvement process grounded upon an
inclusive energetic philosophy using innovative communication formats and media.
 Use and evaluate geographic information system tools to model land use scenarios in
coordination with regional transportation and air quality models.
 Improve the regional transportation planning process and delivery of transportation
projects through early participation in that process by local, state and federal
agencies.
 Improve the integration of the regional housing needs and housing element planning
processes with transportation and environmental planning.
Senior agency staff are to meet regularly, and field office staff are to share data and other
resources. In addition to USEPA, FHWA, Caltrans, and MCAG, signers include the
Federal Transit Adminstration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine
Fisheries Service, and Army Corps of Engineers. State agency participants include the
State Water Resources Control Board, California Dept. of Housing and Community
Development, California Transportation Commission, and California Dept. of Fish and
Game.
This region presents a multitude of resource problems, combined with major
infrastructure plans. The San Joaquin Valley may see High Speed Rail become highly
probable, as there is a bond issue on the November, 2004 ballot in California for $10
billion. There would be a station in or near the City of Merced and this high accessibility
to Silicon Valley and Sacramento will increase the growth rate in Merced County. Also, a
new campus of the University of California is being constructed just northeast of the City
of Merced. This campus will attract considerable growth to the County.
The agency steering committee reviewed available urban growth models, which have
been identified by the EPA in Projecting Land Use Change (2000) and by the FHWA at
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/toolbox/index.htm. The committee selected UPlan,
written at UC Davis previously by our team (Johnston, 2003). Since MCAG is a small
organization, a relatively simple GIS-based urban growth model was chosen. This
agreement states that UC Davis would “use existing database and GIS-based decision
support tools to assist Caltrans ... and ... the Merced County Association of
Governments... in examining possible scenarios for land use in Merced County. These
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tools will support scenario building for the preliminary evaluation of the potential
iterative effects of land use and transportation alternatives.” The FY 2001-02 Tasks
were: perform needs analysis from staff interviews, compile data layers, draft models,
train MCAG staff, MCAG beta test models, and deliver final models. MCAG began to
use the models in their regional transportation planning process, starting in July, 2002.
Here we report on the project in FY 2001-02 and FY 2002-03.
UPlan:
Before relating our progress so far, we need to outline how UPlan works and its data
requirements. UPlan is scripted in Avenue for ArcView3.2 currently, but we are now in
the process of rewriting it in VBA for ArcGIS8, the software that replaces ArcView.
UPlan takes population growth for a county and translates that into number of households
and employees in several categories, according to demographic assumptions that the user
inputs. It then allocates these land uses according to attraction weights. Attractions
represent access to services and transportation facilities with distance buffers around
cities, freeway ramps, highways, etc. The user sets the size and number of buffer rings
and the weights for each ring. The user can also select masks, where growth is prohibited,
such as existing developed, floodplains, surface water bodies, and important habitats.
Residential Low Density is allocated randomly, rather than by attraction, to represent
amenity-seeking rural residences.
Initiation of the Project in FY 2001-02:
As this was the first time these agencies have tried to do coordinated regional planning,
all participants have had to learn as they go. We will report on the first year’s experience,
getting the data and model ready.
The Needs Analysis.
During the initial Stakeholder meetings, we introduced UPlan to agency representatives
and asked for their assistance as the process evolved. A fundamental question to address
as the model was readied to run growth scenarios was “What data layers will we use to
inform the input assumptions and rules driving the urban model?” The identification and
acquisition of data for use in the UPlan model were key elements in addressing this issue.
From early on, we looked to participants to tell us what data layers were important to
them. We explained that since the model is user-driven, we needed their input as to what
factors they considered attractions, discouragements, and environmental constraints
(masks), as well as what actual data layers they considered necessary to include. During a
series of one-on-one meetings held with high-level agency staff, input was also solicited
about data needs and interests, available datasets, and GIS contacts. It was easy enough to
elicit positive comments about desirable data in the abstract. Most agency representatives
knew what they would like to see in data sets informing planning. However, most did not
feel that their data, or the data of other participants, easily met their criteria. This has
been a problem for many data integration efforts ranging from humble local attempts
such as the San Francisco Estuary Institutes’ attempt to create a regional data set, to the
National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) attempts to fuse the myriad data
for federal agencies. Agencies are hesitant to share their own data because they know its
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flaws and they are suspicious and critical of the data of others. This is all understandable.
The remedy in this project has been to characterize the joint planning activities as
scenario building workshops designed to elicit stakeholder interests and values rather
than as real, irreversible physical planning exercises. Such characterization has resulted
in a higher comfort level for all involved. Regional transportation plans in California are
redone every three years, so better data can affect the modeling in subsequent rounds.
Participation of a broader group, including the city councils of even the smallest cities in
the County, is going well. Being flexible and allowing for substantial user input into the
choice of data sets and the characterization of outputs as “scenarios,” not “plans,” has
contributed substantially to the current success of this project.
The Model Revisions.
As this is the first time an agency has used UPlan for an official use, we had to modify
the model, to make it more useful to MCAG. First, the MCAG staff decided to not use
many data layers as absolute masks, but rather to make them into discouragements. So,
we added this capability to the model, by coding them as negative attractions. Now users
can select which layers to use as Discouragements along with their buffers and negative
weights. A large discouragement weight, of course, can act as a mask.
MCAG also wanted easier user input boxes, so we used Dialog Designer to combine the
message boxes into a few screens. Figure 1 shows the first dialog box where you name
the scenario. Figure 2 is the box for entering the demographic and land use inputs. Figure
3 shows the box for selecting attractions, while Figure 4 is the setup for selecting
discouragements. They wanted more coherent outputs, so we took the text files and made
them into XML files that can be read in table, text, or graphical form. The Avenue code
was broken into several modules and made more stable. Output scenarios are now saved
in folders with all inputs. Users also can now recall old scenarios, rename them, change
one or more inputs, and run them anew. There is also a data management window where
the user can change input data layers, so, for example, you can put in a different road
layer for a scenario without going into the Avenue code. Figure 5 shows a typical land
use projection, for part of the county. Projections are in 50m grid cells (about a half acre)
and so are spatially detailed.
For scenario output evaluation, we allow the user to see how many acres of each type of
new land use go on top of each resource discouragement, such as wetlands, rare habitats,
or floodplains. This permits a general evaluation of resource damage. Figure 6 shows the
same land use projection with resource areas overlaid. One can also see acres of land uses
going into each city and into each county planning area. This permits local planners to
evaluate the UPlan projections against their best professional judgement. Finally, we
output the acres of each land use type going into each Transportation Analysis Zone
(TAZ), so that the UPlan outputs can be read into the regional travel model that covers
Merced County. This permits MCAG to input their planned roads in the base year and
run UPlan for 2010 and then add roads in 2010 and run UPlan for 2030. Then, they can
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take the UPlan 2030 land uses into their travel model to see congestion levels and
emissions.
Staff Training:
The MCAG staff found the revised model easy to use, as users now will be able to back
up when doing inputs, save all scenario files, and get standard and customizeable outputs.
Initial Model Use in FY 2002-03:
After the initial meetings in 2001-02 with the State and Federal agencies, to ascertain
what data layers the agencies wanted to have used to represent natural resources under
their jurisdiction, MCAG spent the first half of FY 2002-03 preparing these data and
meeting with its member cities and county to present the model.
The MCAG staff deliberated over the scoring (weighting) of the attractions and found
that some cities would fill up with development before others got any new development
at all. This is an artifact of the way that UPlan uses attractions without any recursive
system of accounting for land prices. Land prices would rise in those cities where vacant
lands were diminishing and this feedback would spread growth across all of the small
cities in the county. Also, UPlan does not have in it a Lowry employment model or some
other representation of where employment growth is likely to occur. In polycentric urban
regions and in counties with several cities, such a mechanism would be useful for
allocating growth across the cities. Simple Lowry models using employment data by zip
code can be used for this purpose. The MCAG staff solved this problem by using UPlan
to allocate growth separately in each subregion in the county with a city in it. This was
done by masking out the rest of the county and using UPlan to allocate the growth
projected for each subarea. This takes more time than running UPlan once for the whole
county and so we are exploring a better method. A simple method that we have used in
other counties is to use the Census population growth block data for 1990-2000 as an
attraction factor. This will tend to allocate growth into, or near to, those blocks, and so
will spread growth across the several cities more realistically. For MCAG, however, we
designed a new version of UPlan that allocates employment growth and population
growth separately to county subareas, based on their shares of countywide growth, 19902000, using Census population block data and Census employment data for places. This
method is more trend-based, but can still be used for scenario testing. It also separates
employment growth and population growth, which is more accurate. We also need to
make sure that MCAG uses the UPlan function for allocating Vacant, Not-Developable
lands first. This allows the user to specify the percentage of land area to be kept vacant in
various areas of the county, such as within cities. The holding out of vacant lands is more
realistic than filling the cities up with new development, of course, and the vacant land
rate can be lowered to represent an infill growth policy.
A related problem the staff encountered was the “blobiness” of growth, where UPlan
allocates growth into contiguous areas and you then get unrealistically compact areas of
new development. One way to avoid this is to use the vacant land holdout function, as
just described. Another method to reduce this problem is to run UPlan for a mid-point
year, such as 2010, or 2020, or both. This results in more heterogeneous land use
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patterns. One also has to pay attention to the land use categories used in the local land use
plans. If, for example, the low-density commercial zone permits high-density residential
land uses (apartments) and they do get built in this zone, then it must be coded in UPlan
to allow this use too. The newest versions of UPlan also now have complex land use
types, such as Urban Reserve, Mixed-Use, and Planned Development, that allow two or
more land uses to be allocated. We also now permit the user to change the local land use
plans by marking polygons and changing the land use category, or by drawing new
polygons.
The MCAG staff also continued to debate how to score the various masks and
discouragements that represent hazardous areas and important economic and natural
resources. Masks prohibit development and so were used only for developed parcels,
surface water bodies, and public parklands. All hazards were treated as discouragements
(negative attractions), because development is allowed in floodplains, with restrictions
for some land uses (there are no steep slopes in this county). Important habitat lands were
also treated as discouragements, but this issue is not too critical since these lands virtually
all are not near to current developed land uses, or in areas likely to be developed before
2030. Figure 7 shows the environmental discouragements, weighted and aggregated. The
most critical issue for this county is the protection of prime agricultural lands. Most of the
cities are surrounded partially, or wholly, by prime ag lands. So, MCAG intends to try
out different scenarios: one with higher discouragement weights for the habitat lands (the
enviro scenario), one with higher discouragement weights for the prime ag lands (the
aggie scenario), and one with higher densities of land uses with restrictions on rural
development (the compact growth scenario).
These growth scenarios will be run for the regional transportation plan horizon year,
2030, and then the land uses will be read out by traffic analysis zone, a simple function in
ArcView. The acres of new development by land use type by TAZ will then be converted
into households and employment by type, added to the 2000 data for each TAZ, and
entered into the MCAG travel model zone input file. After running their travel model,
MCAG will evaluate these scenarios for vehicle-miles-of-travel (VMT), congestion on
links, vehicle-hours-of-delay, and emissions. The staff will also calculate how many acres
of habitats and prime and nonprime ag lands are consumed by development in each
scenario.
At this early stage in using UPlan, the MCAG staff likes the faster turnaround of
scenarios and data for their travel model. They also appreciate the ability to produce
maps of resources and scenarios for use in meetings. Model improvements funded for FY
2003-04 include rewriting UPlan in VBA for ArcGIS8, a better user interface with more
functions, and the addition of a local service costs model that will take the projected land
uses and calculate local service costs, based on how far the new developments are from
existing services. The MCAG staff also wants to discuss allocation to parcels, instead of
cells. This can be done, but is slower than using cells in ArcGIS. We will investigate this,
however.
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Recent Progress, Late 2003:
Most jurisdictions routinely update their Regional Transportation Plan every three years.
But this time, MCAG took an innovative approach – quite a departure from previous
RTPs – by building a transportation plan based on the vision that residents have for
Merced County. Eight focus groups were formed, including groups that have been
traditionally underrepresented: Business/Education, Southeast Asian (primarily Hmong),
Latino, Environmental/Outdoor Recreation, Seniors, Youth, Agriculture, and
Commuters/Professional Drivers. Including the focus groups, over 30 meetings were held
to ask residents for their vision of the ideal future for Merced County. Six themes rose
clearly to the top:






Provide a good system of roads that are well maintained, safe, efficient and
meet the transportation demands of people and freight
Provide a transit system that is a viable choice
Support full-time employment with livable wages -- i.e. support job creation
& economic vitality
Encourage preservation of productive agricultural land/maintain strong
agricultural economy and the quality of life that goes with it
Support clean air and water and avoid, minimize or mitigate negative impacts
to the environment
Support orderly and planned growth that enhances the integration and
connectivity of various modes of transportation
Based on those vision themes, residents were asked, in May, to develop transportationrelated goals. Top issues from those goals include system connectivity among modes;
coordinated land use and transportation planning, as well as interregional planning;
higher densities and infill development; and livable communities that have a
jobs/housing/shopping balance. After the transportation goals were distilled, residents
again participated in September to discuss specific transportation problems and possible
solutions.
All of this participation meant that MCAG held 32 meetings each quarter, in a six-week
time frame, and engaged hundreds of residents. In February, they distributed a lengthy
questionnaire throughout the county and placed it on their web site. The questions were
chosen to get beyond the usual feedback regarding transportation; to develop an
emotional shortcut to residents’ deeper feelings about the area. MCAG also
commissioned a random telephone survey of the public’s attitudes and desires for the
future, and distributed two other surveys. Combined with the eight focus groups,
community meetings, and meetings with local planning commissions, MCAG engaged
over 3,000 residents in transportation planning.
Outreach to county residents is one aspect of the Partnership for Integrated Planning
(PIP): Merced Pilot. Another major portion of the program is engaging resource agencies
in a collaborative effort at the planning, rather than the project, stage. An effort was
initiated in late 2002 to bring together representatives of state and federal agencies that
have responsibility for and deal with cumulative impacts analysis of transportation
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projects in CEQA and NEPA processes. The intent of the Cumulative Impacts Analysis
component was to conduct a series of group meetings to:
 Discuss cumulative impacts terms, roles and responsibilities
 Address traditional problems in cumulative impacts analysis and mitigation
 Develop an approach for the conduct of the cumulative impacts analysis in the
RTP, based on the collaborative input and applicable to a plan level analysis
The UPlan model will be instrumental in applying the guidelines created by this group
and developing the cumulative impacts analysis for the Regional Transportation Plan.
In addition to the Cumulative Impacts Committee, a larger Stakeholder committee has
has taken the giant step of providing environmental ranking criteria for MCAG to
incorporate in its GIS layers. This process can be called environmental planning as the
agencies are attempting to work together to protect important resources in advance of
formulating the RTP.
In terms of the GIS layers, habitats and habitat linkages have been delineated in an
environmental “hot spots” map. When this was introduced at a recent meeting of state
and federal agencies, those agencies who had not participated in the ranking process
asked to be included. Masks (to growth, in UPlan) are being used sparingly, because
some of the resources, such as kit fox habitat and prime ag land, are very large in extent.
The only masks designated so far are for public parks and refuges and for vernal pools
with fairy shrimp, a listed species. High discouragement weights have been given to:
vernal pool complexes (with a 0.25-mile buffer), rivers and streams (with a 0.5-mile
buffer), known recent occurrences of listed vertebrate species, and habitat linkages.
Medium discouragement weights were given to critical habitats and NDDB habitats.
Low discouragement weights were given to all other public lands, prime ag lands,
floodplains and wetlands.
The level of involvement of the state and federal resource agencies has varied across
agencies, but has generally been good. The local cities and unincorporated communities
– those represented by Municipal Advisory Committees – in the county have been very
committed to the planning process. The UPlan GIS layers have generated a renewed
level of interest as esoteric concepts can now be visually displayed.
Initial assessments by the PIP Steering Committee are that this pilot process requires
more resources in terms of budget and time commitment than does a standard RTP
process, but it definitely has a higher public awareness level and more involvement from
the state and federal agencies at the planning stage. It remains to be seen if the early,
collaborative efforts will streamline project delivery and if environmental resources are
better protected than in typical RTP processes.
The next step in the PIP process is to develop and evaluate RTP scenarios. It is during
this important stage where we will be better able to judge the utility of using the UPlan
model.
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Prognosis:
We will probably have to make further revisions to UPlan, after the MCAG staff try out
several scenarios. We will also probably want to make some improvements, after seeing
how well the model interfaces with their travel model. They also want the option for the
model to be used by their member city and county planning departments, and we will see
what needs arise from these users who have, to date, only seen demonstrations of the
model. For example, the user interface could have instructions added to it.
More interesting will be the learning process that all the agencies will be going through,
to develop ideas for environmental planning for the MCAG region. For more than three
decades, academics have repeatedly urged the early engagement of State and Federal
agencies with local government in land use, infrastructure and natural resources planning.
This demonstration finally brings this desire to reality, as none of the agencies has done
cooperative regional land use, transportation, and resources planning. It is very unusual
for a state DOT to admit that new roads influence urban growth patterns, much less
support the development of tools for the analysis of these effects. It is also uncommon
for U.S. EPA to become involved early in local land use planning. Community-based,
locally led, planning initiatives with Federal and state agency cooperators are rare and
have mostly involved USFS- or BLM-related issues. So, we view this land use planning
cooperation as a demonstration of national importance.
Many issues are sure to arise, as UPlan is put into use for scenario design and evaluation.
Issues of masking out various resource types, such as Natural Diversity areas and vernal
pool compexes, will undoubtedly be brought up by the resources agencies, after seeing
initial scenarios for 2030. They may not be satisfied with simply discouraging growth on
those lands. Growth restrictions around the new University of California Merced campus
will certainly be discussed. The lands to the east of the campus site contain the largest
vernal pool complex in California and so some agencies and citizens groups will seek to
protect all of these lands.
There are, also, a number of fundamental concerns over agency authority that have been
raised by Stakeholder agencies and that will need to be answered as the process evolves,
such as:
What's in it for my agency? What do we get from participating?
What are the tangible commitments of resources and staff time that the MOU is asking
for?
Are we giving away our rights or obligations to develop our projects?
If we begin to let resource agencies in early in the transportation planning process, how
much delayed will our plan and projects be?
How do we address and resolve differences in resource values, agency missions and
statutory responsibilities?
Another set of issues will center around the transportation policies to be evaluated. For
example, it is questionable whether compact growth, by itself, could reduce travel and
emissions significantly in this region, as there is limited bus service. The travel model
does not have a mode choice step right now, but MCAG plans to add mode choice to
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their travel model in the next year, in order to be able to evaluate transit scenarios more
accurately.
Whatever happens in this demonstration, it is likely that UPlan will be useful for other
small MPOs, especially ones with simple travel models. Indeed, Caltrans has recently
decided to extend the use of UPlan to the other seven San Joaquin Valley counties. Since
all of these counties use the same travel model systems software, the models may be
joined into three subregional models and run with UPlan, to examine multi-county
transportation and land use scenarios.
Conclusions:
The benefits of this pilot project will be reaped over time and cannot be fully evaluated
yet. For example, whether the delivery of major transportation infrastructure is in fact
accelerated will not be apparent for several years. However, several conclusions can still
be drawn:
1. The most important objective of this process may already have been achieved.
Local, State and Federal government bodies are engaged early on in value
discovery, information sharing, and alternatives analysis even before the first
stroke of a pen on any planning or infrastructure document.
2. Urban growth and infrastructure will likely have a much greater impact on
agricultural resources than habitat and species resources. Little if any growth is
likely within 30 years in most of the habitat areas. Conversely, nearly all
communities are surrounded by ag lands.
3. Direct impacts from transportation infrastructure on these resources is relatively
minimal in Merced County, especially when compared to the impacts from urban
growth.
Acknowledgements:
Caltrans funded this work and we thank them for the financial support and for their
progressive attitude about planning.
References:
Projecting Land-Use Change: A Summary of Models for Assessing the Effects of
Community Growth and Change on Land-Use Patterns. USEPA Rept. EPA/600/R00/098, Sept. Washington, D.C.
Johnston, Robert A., David R. Shabazian, and Shengyi Gao. 2003. UPlan: A Versatile
Urban Growth Model for Transportation Planning. Transportation Research Record. In
press.
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Figure 1: The Opening Dialog Box
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Figure 2: Box for Demographic and Land Use Inputs
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Figure 3: Box for Selecting Attractions
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Figure 4: Box for Selecting Discouragements
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Figure 5: A Typical Land Use Projection (detail)
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Figure 6: Land Uses with Resource Conflicts
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Figure 7: Environmental Hotspots
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