Understanding travel behavior: data availability and gap scan

Recent travel behavior trendsin the United States revealsignificant and unprecedented shifts. While factors causing these shifts are probably abundant and diversein nature, it is alarming that these changes were notforecasted. Even more troubling, these significant shiftsare continue tooccurwithno considerableimprovementin our ability to forecast these changes. However, it has become clear that we have adire need to identify and develop new sources of travel informationto improveour ability to understand and forecastrecent travel behaviortrends.Naturally, different transportation agencies have different information needs and every agency is interested in identifying the best methods suitable for addressing their specific set of information needs. Typically, a transportation agency relies on one of two tools in their toolbox: transportation data or travel models. In general, this report intends to provide transportation agencies with additional tools (both models and data) that could enable them identify more efficient means for addressing their specific needs. This work develops and presents a methodology to demonstrate how different and diverse data sources could be evaluated and ranked to answer travel behavior information needs. In order to assess the suitability and potential of existing data sources for addressing a specific set of eight High Priority Information Needs (HPINs), this document (Understanding Travel Behavior: Data Availability and Gaps Scan) provides an inventory and assessment of current and potential data sources that can be used to identify and quantify emerging trends in travel behavior. In this report, 23 different data sources –representing a diverse array travel data sources, including traditional, niche, and other potential data sources – are assessed and ranked for addressing a specific set of eight HPINs. The results of the work yield a number of observations and lead to a number of potentially valuable future research directions. The report is divided into the following seven chapters.