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household surveys, which are so costly that they are rarely conducted more than once every ten years and are often out-of-date within a year or two. Research is proposed that would test the feasibility of supplementing or supplanting these surveys with commercial databases. 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 commercial 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.Commercial Applications:The proposed research should identify promising uses of commercial data that might be employed to reduce, replace, or supplement the extensive personal surveys currently employed in transportation planning. Potential commercial applications include the preparation of marketable databases aimed at transportation planners and/or the development of computer programs designed to incorporate new data approaches in the planning process.
