Immigrants and Travel Demand in the United States Implications for Transportation Policy and Future Research

Immigrants account for a majority of recent urban population growth in the United States, and for much economic growth as well. This is expected to continue for the next several decades. The foreign-born are much more likely to use transit, carpool, walk, and bicycle, particularly in their first few years of living in the United States. These trends represent challenges and opportunities for transportation and land use planners to increase the environmental sustainability of population growth, use existing transportation systems to their maximum efficiency, and support economic development. But doing so depends on anticipating the travel demands of varying immigrant groups, and those demands in turn depend on their employment and residential location choices. The authors present the most current data available on these trends, summarize research literature, and identify the major research questions needing answers to understand how to accommodate the travel demands of immigration-driven population growth.