Trip generation rates for South African golf clubs and estates

Abstract

Paper presented at the 28th Annual Southern African Transport Conference 6 - 9 July 2009 "Sustainable Transport", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

There has been a surge in the development of golf estates in South Africa; however, adequate information regarding the trip generation potential of this land use is still not available. This study aims to determine trip generation rates for South African golf clubs and estates and ascertain an independent characteristic specific to all golf estates to which the trip generation rates relate. Two golfing land uses were investigated during this study, namely recreational golf courses and residential golf estates. Trip generation rates have been investigated primarily for recreational golf courses. The applicability of these rates to describe golf related traffic at residential golf estates was then considered.Traffic counts were conducted at six golf courses and estates in the Boland region during the winter months of July, August and September of 2008. Trip generation rates are expected to represent the top 75 percentile of occurring traffic volumes, consequently, rates are required for the peak summer season. This study therefore includes the application of statistical methods for converting counted winter traffic volumes into equivalent summer traffic. These data manipulation methods were developed during the course of this project, and have applications in other traffic engineering circumstances. This paper also considers the use of previously unused trip generation characteristics. It was determined that the starting period of a golfing session, a newly defined characteristic, produced the most accurate trip generation rates for recreational golf courses.Additionally, it was found that these rates can be applied to residential golf estates when multiplied with an applicable capture rate to reduce total traffic volumes.