Investigating Travel Survey Representativeness: Who’s Missing and What Can We Do?

Term Start:

January 1, 2024

Term End:

May 31, 2025

Budget:

$300,000

Keywords:

Surveys, Travel Behavior, Travel Forecasting

Thrust Area(s):

Data Modeling and Analytic Tools, Equity and Understanding User Needs

University Lead:

University of Michigan

Researcher(s):

Atiyya Shaw

The core source of data for transportation planning and forecasting comes from household travel surveys. Travel surveys are used to obtain insight into the behavioral decisions of travelers; for example: (1) trip purposes such as work or shopping; (2) means/mode of transport such as car, walk, bus, etc.; (3) travel time; and (4) time of day/week. However, these surveys tend to underrepresent the views and needs of people of color and low-income travelers, precisely the groups that depend most on historically underfunded travel modes like public transit, biking, and walking. In addition to this underrepresentation, it is increasingly difficult to obtain high quality data from those who do respond (e.g., response biases, measurement errors for underrepresented groups), as well as to obtain the detailed contextual and psychological attribute information needed for accurate behavioral forecasting. The goal of this project is to investigate household travel survey biases to identify the causes and propose potential solutions. This goal will be achieved via the following tasks:

  • Task 1: a quantitative investigation of national and state transportation household survey biases across diverse metropolitan regions in the United States;
  • Task 2: the documentation and comparison of the sampling methods, instrument evaluation, and post-processing correction methods utilized across these various household survey implementations;
  • Task 3: a case study for the Detroit metro area that more closely analyzes and seeks to define hard-to-reach populations and geographies, and provides targeted insight for sampling methods, outreach, and instrument design; and
  • Task 4: the development of a methodological guide in the form of a white paper oriented toward approaches that can be used by transportation organizations, agencies, and firms.
Project scope

Scroll to Top