Location and Transportation is worth 8 of the 85 scored questions on the LEED AP BD+C exam, and it falls from 9 on the Green Associate paper. There are 8 questions below, one for each scored question this domain carries. Equitable Development uses 15% twice, against two different denominators — local hires as a share of jobs created, and apprentice participation as a share of hours worked. They sound interchangeable. They are not, and one question below turns on it.
It covers Sensitive Land Protection, Equitable Development, Compact and Connected Development, Transportation Demand Management and Electric Vehicles.
Almost every credit here turns on a threshold with a specific denominator, and the denominators are what candidates get wrong rather than the numbers.
8 Location and Transportation practice questions
Attempt all of them before checking the explanations. Write your answers down — deciding in your head and then reading the explanation is how a candidate convinces themselves they knew something they did not.
Take the quiz — get your scored results by email
Recall, Application, Analysis — and why it matters here
The candidate handbook names three cognitive levels: Recall, Application and Analysis. It publishes no split between them, so nobody can tell you what share of your paper will be which. What we can tell you is that only the first is fixed by more reading. Past a point, re-reading the material stops helping and worked problems start.
Each answer in this set is tagged with the level it was written at, so you can see which kind you are losing. If your errors cluster in Recall, revise. If they cluster in Application and Analysis, do more questions — those are the only thing that moves them.
What these questions test
| Area | What you need to understand |
|---|---|
| Sensitive Land Protection | Water body and wetland setbacks and the separate protection percentages applied to steep slopes |
| Equitable Development | Why the same 15% figure can use different denominators for local hiring and apprenticeship participation |
| Transit access | How weekday and weekend trip counts are selected and why both directions are not simply added together |
| Transportation Demand Management | What an assessment exemption removes and what a project must still do to earn the credit |
| Electric Vehicles | Which parking spaces count, percentage thresholds, absolute minimums and rounding |
| EV charging and readiness | Combining tiers without claiming the same parking space twice |
| Walkable Location | The limit on countable uses of a single type and the requirement to span multiple categories |
| Threshold denominators | Identifying what a percentage is actually measured against before applying the number |
Where candidates lose marks in this domain
- Remembering the percentage but forgetting the denominator. A correct number applied to the wrong base still produces a wrong answer.
- Swapping the water body and wetland setbacks. They are different and are easy to reverse under time pressure.
- Applying one slope-protection percentage to the whole area. The slope bands are calculated separately.
- Treating the two 15% Equitable Development thresholds as the same test. One is measured against jobs created and the other against hours worked.
- Counting transit trips in both directions. The credit uses specific weekday and weekend selection rules.
- Assuming a TDM assessment exemption earns the credit automatically. It removes assessment work, not the need to achieve a qualifying measure.
- Including public on-street parking in the EV parking base. Off-street spaces owned or leased by the project are treated differently.
- Ignoring absolute EV minimums. The percentage calculation does not always control.
- Double counting charging and EV-ready spaces. The same space cannot satisfy both claims when the requirements call for distinct sets.
- Counting every nearby use. Walkable Location limits how many uses of one type may be counted.
Where these questions came from
Every question on this page was written for it. None is taken from a real GBCI exam, from 3FOLD's paid mock exams, from our module quizzes, or from a competitor. Reproducing a real exam question would breach the candidate agreement that every candidate signs, and we are not going to ask you to read one.
What they are built from: the published LEED v5 BD+C rating system requirements and thresholds, and 3FOLD's own teaching handouts. Facts, thresholds and credit names are usable; USGBC's wording is not, so every stem, option and explanation here is in our own words. Where our own material and a published source disagree, we have left the point out rather than pick a side.
Where to go next
- All eight domain sets — work every one and you will have answered 85 questions, weighted exactly as the specification weights the real paper.
- The full timed mock — when you want the whole paper under exam conditions rather than one domain at a time.
- The same domain at Green Associate level — useful if you are preparing for both exams, and a fast way to feel the change in depth.
Frequently asked questions
How many Location and Transportation questions are on the LEED AP BD+C exam?
8 of the 85 scored questions. The paper delivers 100 and scores 85, so the weighting is a share of the 85, not of the 100.
Are these real LEED AP exam questions?
No, and you should be wary of any page that says its questions are. Every question here was written for this page. Reproducing a real GBCI question would breach the candidate agreement.
Is Location and Transportation harder on the AP exam than on the Green Associate exam?
The topics overlap, but the depth is different. The specialty paper asks you to apply thresholds, denominators, exclusions and counting rules rather than simply recognise the concepts.
If it would help to talk it through
3FOLD TRAINING has prepared professionals for certification exams since 2008, across more than 100 countries. If you are working through these and want a read on whether you are ready, describe where you are through the course enquiry form. Our LEED AP BD+C training covers the full syllabus. Related: the Green Associate set for this domain. No course is required to sit or pass the exam, ours included — and free questions are worth more to you than a course you do not need.
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