Combining household travel survey data and passively collected data to improve the understanding of travel behavior in the greater Boise, Idaho region 

Date and Time: 8/29/2022
Location: North Star

Presenter: Theodore Mansfield, Senior Consultant, RSG

  

 

 

PRESENTATION DESCRIPTION

Recently, passively collected location data, commonly referred to as big data, have transformed how transportation agencies understand travel to, from, and within their regions. Yet, as methods to derive travel behavior from these data have evolved, several key gaps remain—notably, trip, individual, and household-level characteristics must be imputed, and methods for doing so are often opaque and poorly documented. Conversely, more traditional household travel surveys collect detailed trip, individual, and household-level characteristics, but typically for a relatively small share of the population. While household travel surveys and passively collected data have unique strengths and weaknesses, frameworks for combining these datasets are lacking. This paper proposes a framework for establishing a combined travel survey/passively collected data program and presents a case study application performed for the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho (COMPASS), the MPO serving Ada and Canyon Counties, ID. This case study pairs a smartphone app-based travel survey, used to gain a detailed understanding of how residents travel in the region, with an analysis of third-party passively collected data processed by RSG to better understand travel patterns for visitors and commuters to the region. Additionally, passively collected data processed by RSG are used alongside household travel survey data to perform a market assessment of travelers using I-84 to access the greater Boise, ID, region. This work was prepared by RSG in cooperation with COMPASS staff Mary Ann Waldinger and Mitch Skiles, P.E.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Ted is a transportation data scientist interested in leveraging new data sources to better understand travel behaviors and building custom software tools to estimate the health and equity impacts of transportation systems. He is member of TRB’s Transportation and Public Health Committee and Urban Transportation Data and Information Systems Committee. When not nerding out on the latest and greatest transportation data, Ted enjoys riding his bike, playing the clarinet, and home-brewing kombucha.