Tour Generation of Interregional Travel in the United States: Insights from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS)

This study focuses on interregional travel, a submarket of long-distance travel (LDT) with one-way distance in the range of 50–600 miles. Interregional travel warrants focal attention for two reasons. First, despite its modest share (less than 4%) in the US domestic travel market, interregional travel contributes over 20% of total vehicle miles traveled and a commensurate amount of transportation emissions. Second, interregional travel covers a distance range with the greatest potential to achieve multimodality. Better understanding interregional travel can help inform statewide and nationwide transportation planning, for instance, the ongoing Federal Rail Administration’s Regional Rail Planning. However, existing studies on interregional travel are scarce due to data limitations. This study taps into the data from National Household Travel Surveys (NHTS) and analyzes the characteristics of interregional tours, with a tour consisting of multiple connected trips. To address the issue of excessive zero observations for interregional travel in the cross-sectional NHTS dataset, the study estimates zero-inflated models and contrasts tour generation characteristics for interregional travel with those for intraregional and the long-haul component of LDT. Elasticities of interregional tour frequencies are calculated with respect to five planning or policy variables, including age, gasoline price-adjusted income, vehicle ownership, household size, and tour complexity. The study demonstrates the potential of utilizing the existing NHTS data for interregional travel analysis. The study’s findings help inform multiregional and national transportation investment decisions and policy deliberations.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $65,000.00
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3551747135

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Project Managers:

  Stearns, Amy

• Performing Organizations:

  Cooperative Mobility for Competitive Megaregions (CM2)

  University of Texas at Austin
  Austin, TX  United States  78712
• Principal Investigators:

  Zhang, Ming

• Start Date: 20211001
• Expected Completion Date: 20230930
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Regions; Travel surveys; Trip generation; Trip length
• Identifier Terms: National Household Travel Survey
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01937928
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Cooperative Mobility for Competitive Megaregions (CM2)
• Contract Numbers: 69A3551747135
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Nov 23 2024 10:58AM