Household Travel Data Simulation Tool

Data transferability is seen as an alternative solution to costly travel surveys for urban areas where regular travel data are difficult to collect, especially in small and mid-sized communities. A comprehensive travel data transferability model and a software tool that can facilitate travel data transferability and simulate synthetic household-level disaggregate travel data have been developed. The model is built on earlier transferability studies by a significant enhancement of the approach and resolution of many limitations of previous studies. The software tool has been tested on two case studies in Des Moines, Iowa, and New York State. Nine household-level travel attributes are simulated for the synthetic population of these regions. A comparison of the simulated travel data with the actual observed data, obtained from the National Household Travel Survey add-on samples, proves the accuracy of the model. It is also shown that updating the parameters of the distributions of travel attributes can further improve the results. The model is then used for some basic policy evaluations and a sensitivity analysis that includes scenarios such as changes to the demographics, aging population, and investments in the education system. The result of the sensitivity analysis also confirmed the wide capabilities of the model.