Abstract

Weekend outdoor recreational travel has a major impact on the highway network in Kentucky. Data from a previous study (1) indicate that the number of people visiting 42 typical Kentucky outdoor recreation areas on an average summer Sunday in 1970 was approximately 260,000. Most of these 42 areas, by virtue of their outdoor nature, are located in rural settings. Most have access to major arterial highways only by means of narrow, low standard rural roads. Traffic generated by the recreation areas and their associated developments severely strains these secondary access highways and places a significant additional load on the rural arterial network.

Construction of man-made lakes often inundates a portion of the highway network. It has been the policy of federal and state agencies to reconstruct these displaced highways to the same standards as the original facilities. However, increased traffic due to development of the area for recreational purposes often renders the old standards inadequate. In addition, development of even non-water-based areas sometimes necessitates construction of new access roads. Too often these roads are constructed to handle an insufficient volume of traffic either because of funding limitations or because of an inadequate assessment of travel demands and characteristics.

The purpose of this study was the development of a method for modeling Kentucky's outdoor recreational travel (APPENDIX I contains an outline of the major phases of the study). This information can be used for predicting future travel patterns which allows intelligent planning of highway facilities to accommodate traffic generated by future outdoor recreation developments. As such, this study represents an extension of analyses completed earlier by Pigman (1). It utilizes the same data base but concentrates on the application of gravity and intervening opportunities models to Kentucky's outdoor recreational travel.

Report Date

8-1972

Report Number

No. 336

Digital Object Identifier

http://dx.doi.org/10.13023/KTC.RR.1972.336

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