Transferability of Household Travel Survey Data for Small Areas

1. Transferability of Household Travel Survey Data for Small Areas Jie (Jane) Lin, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Liang Long (PhD candidate) Department of Civil and Materials Engineering & Institute of Environmental Science and Policy Primary Grant Support: Federal Highway Administration • Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) with population of over 50,000 are required to have their models calibrated on a continuing basis using new data • Surveys are expensive instruments and the data required to support the planning process can become outdated • Improving simple conventional approach of testing feasibility of transferability • Investigating new methods of updating/synthesis trip information • Defining neighborhood type using US Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP). Each neighborhood type is distinctively defined and reasonably homogenous in terms of socio-economic and travel characteristics. • Two-level random coefficient models are applied to test transferability of travel attributes across geographic areas, like number of trips, Mode Choice and Vehicle Miles Traveled(VMT) by using National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) for each neighborhood type. • Small area estimation methods, i.e. Generalized regression estimator, synthetic estimator and empirical linear unbiased predictor, are investigated to simulate travel survey information for local areas by using NHTS and CTPP. • Studies have shown the importance of residential location, neighborhood type and household lifestyle to household travel behavior. • We have shown that transferability can be formulated into a two-level random coefficient structure and thus transferability can be statistically tested. In general number of journey to work vehicle trips is the most transferable across geographic areas compared to mode choice. While the mode choice is transferable across CMSAs with similar census tracts information. • Small area estimation provides good methods to simulate local travel information by using National survey dataset, like NHTS and CTPP.