Three members of the TBD Center leadership team, Steven Polzin, Ram M. Pendyala, and Irfan Batur, have published a feature article, “Can Transportation Planning Catch Up to a Changing World?”, in TR News, the magazine of the Transportation Research Board (Issue 359, Fall 2026).
Drawing on more than 20 years of American Time Use Survey data, the authors examine how travel behavior has changed and what those changes mean for transportation planning and forecasting. The article offers two key takeaways:
- Travel behavior has fundamentally changed. Daily per capita trip rates in 2025 were more than 29% below 2003 levels. Yet fewer personal trips have not produced an equivalent decline in roadway travel, as delivery, freight, commercial, and service traffic reshape travel demand and traffic patterns on the nation’s transportation networks.
- Forecasting must account for whether people travel at all. Working, shopping, and accessing services virtually, or outsourcing trips to delivery and service providers, require a broader understanding of how people travel and undertake activities. Planning processes must become more dynamic and flexible, explicitly accounting for uncertainty as technologies and behaviors evolve.
These questions are central to the TBD Center’s mission to advance understanding of future travel behavior and demand. The transportation investments made today will serve communities for decades, making it essential that planning methods keep pace with a changing world.
Read the article here.