Analysis of National Travel Trends

Term Start:

September 1, 2026

Term End:

May 30, 2028

Budget:

$100,000

Keywords:

Telework, Travel Behavior

Thrust Area(s):

Data Collection Mechanisms, Understanding User Needs

University Lead:

Arizona State University

Researcher(s):

Steven Polzin; Ram Pendyala; Irfan Batur

Over the past few decades, the transportation landscape has undergone a significant transformation, driven by technological innovations, demographic shifts, and evolving socio-cultural norms. The proliferation of information and communication technologies has revolutionized how and where individuals undertake daily activities, increasingly substituting physical travel with virtual alternatives and reshaping work through telework. Changes in technology have also altered mode characteristics and performance and introduced new options such as micromobility, ride-hailing, autonomous vehicles, and robotic delivery. Concurrently, demographic changes have altered travel needs and preferences. The population is aging, years spent in educational systems are increasing, and labor force participation rates have been declining. Migration trends from urban centers to suburban and exurban areas, as well as between metro areas, raise critical questions about service levels and infrastructure needs. Increasing diversity in lifestyles, attitudes, and values has added complexity to travel choices and patterns of activity, mobility, and time use. This multi-stage project aims to shed light on trends in time, travel, transit, telework, and transportation spending over the past two decades and beyond. The effort will expand and extend ongoing analysis that the project team has conducted over many years, seeking to identify emerging trends such as behavior stabilization following the COVID-19 pandemic and the pace of influence from emerging travel options. Understanding these trends is crucial for addressing current and future challenges in transportation management, economic resilience, and societal well-being. The project will utilize data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES), the American Community Survey (ACS), and the new National Household Travel Survey (NHTS 2025), supplemented by national metrics on e-commerce, telework participation, roadway vehicle miles traveled, transit ridership, and airline travel. An advanced data fusion approach will integrate these diverse datasets through compilation, cleansing, merging, and aggregation, applying rigorous statistical tools to ensure accuracy and reliability. Qualitative interpretation and implication narratives will reflect the multi-decade history of monitoring travel behavior by the principal investigators. The insights derived from this project are expected to support transportation planning and policy development, inform the identification of relevant metrics for tracking travel trends, and contribute to the Center’s Travel Behavior and Demand (TBD) Data Hub by providing a comprehensive, multi-dimensional view of the evolving national transportation landscape.

Project scope

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