Transportation Planning Uses of Commercial Data

Transportation planning currently relies on extensive and expensive household surveys, which are so costly that they are rarely conducted more than once every ten years and are often out-of-data within a year or two. Research is proposed that would test the feasibility of supplementing or supplanting these surveys with commercial data bases. To accomplish this, existing data sources will be reviewed and prominent planners at the state, regional, and local levels will be polled to document past experiences with commerical data and assemble suggestions regarding promising data sources. Once sources of potentially useful data have been identified, the cost, availability, collection frequency, format, and any use restrictions will be documented for each source. Approaches will be developed adapting promising data sources to the planning process, and the statistical adequacy, timeliness, and development requirements of these approaches will be compared with traditional planning practices. A plan for demonstrating and field testing promising approaches will be developed.