How Wal-Mart Development Impacts Transporation

As Wal-Mart focuses on “greening” their supply chain it is important to note the effects of their supercenter development on local traffic, and the macro effects of this local traffic on global climate change.

Wal-Mart prefers to build their stores where they can get the largest lots and the cheapest land. This frequently places their stores on the outskirts of municipal borders. Generally speaking Wal-Mart supercenters can only be effectively reached by automobile because they are sited away from municipal centers. Wal-Mart’s supercenters by their very nature create a heavy amount of traffic, when a heavy amount of traffic is shifted away from a municipal center, this creates transportation patterns that were not originally envisioned when most American towns and cities were first designed.

While decentralizing commercial business districts, Wal-Mart puts a heavy emphasis on large parking lots and the placement of the stores takes away transportation options. Wal-Mart supercenters are often located in places where it is extremely difficult to walk to.

Because Wal-Mart’s supercenters are so decentralized with regards to municipal planning, and because they do create such a heavy amount of traffic, in some towns Wal-Mart supercenters create traffic problems for the entire town. This increases the vehicle miles traveled and the amount of time spent in a vehicle for residents.

The environmental and energy consequences come from increased fuel usage and carbon emissions that come from more people spending more time in their cars traveling, either because they are taking trips to the store or because of the traffic that is generated from people taking trips to the store. Since most stores are open 24 hours, the negative effect on traffic patterns has an effect every hour, both day and evening.

When one is considering the mass effect Wal-Mart is having just by changing local traffic patterns, it begins to have a global effect because of the carbon emissions from cars and trucks increased travel time contributes to global climate change. This is why to actually be a sustainable company Wal-Mart needs to reconsider how they site stores, the size of their stores and where they site stores in order to be more sustainable as a company.

Instead of building new commercial areas on the outskirts of towns, it may be best that Wal-Mart concentrates on existing store sites which are often closer to central business districts and building stores within existing central business districts. Changing their development strategy may require a different store design: but it will have a beneficial effect on local traffic patterns and reduce the unsustainable practice of sprawl development in which Wal-Mart has been the main commercial contributor.

Without looking at the traffic impacts in a realistic way and how they contribute to carbon emissions, Wal-Mart themselves cannot become a truly sustainable company. As it stands the impact Wal-Mart development practices have a macro impact on carbon emissions because of how Wal-Mart supercenters contribute to local traffic problems.

• Click here for an example of how Wal-Mart expansion can affect transportation.
• Click here to learn more about Wal-Mart’s environmental impact.

Posted by Research Team on Wednesday, February 07, 2007

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