Travel Determinants and Multiscale Transferability of National Activity Patterns to Local Populations

The ability to transfer national travel patterns to a local population is of interest for modeling either large areas that exceed the boundaries of a metropolitan planning organization or small regions with no available travel survey data. At the core of this research are questions about the connection between travel behavior and land use, urban form, and accessibility. To explore this relationship, the researchers selected a group of land use variables to define activity and travel patterns for individuals and households. The 2001 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) participants were divided into categories consisting of a set of latent cluster models representing persons, travel, and land use. This set was compared with two sets of cluster models constructed for two local travel surveys. Mean statistical tests were compared to assess differences among socio-demographic groups residing in localities with similar land uses. The results showed that the NHTS and the local surveys shared mean population activity and travel characteristics. However, these similarities masked behavioral heterogeneity, which was seen when distributions of activity and travel behavior were examined. Therefore, data from a national household travel survey in combination with land use data cannot be used to model local population travel characteristics if the goal is to model the behavioral distributions and not just mean travel behavior characteristics.