This synthesis will be of interest to planning, administrative, and traffic officials in state transportation agencies and in metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs); to consultants concerned with the design and conduct of surveys; and to those engaged in developing and applying travel forecasting models. It describes the various facets of planning, designing, conducting, and evaluating household travel surveys. This report of the Transportation Research Board provides information on the manner in which many household surveys are currently carried out and provides comment on the likely changes in the process, in the survey instrument, and in the application of more cost-effective methods of data collection in household travel surveys. This synthesis describes the methods for collection, including survey instrument design, as well as testing and administering the surveys. Information on time and cost requirements is also included, as are descriptions of evaluation and data analysis methods.

The U.S. Dept. of Transport. (DoT) Strategic Plan for FY 1997-2002 identifies 5 performance goals: safety, mobility, econ. growth & trade, human & natural environ., & nat. security. DoT conducts the NPTS to obtain info. on personal travel of U.S. households with respect to why, how, when, where from, where to, how frequently, how long, & with whom. The NPTS also provides info. by subgroups of the pop., e.g., by age, gender, race, zero-vehicle households, which allows important policy analyses of how transport. serves these groups. This report provides the results of the 1995 NPTS of travel by the civilian, non-institutionalized pop. age 5 & older.

Identifies various challenges to the world community of transport survey specialists as well as the larger constituency of practitioners, planners, and decision-makers that it serves and provides potential solutions and recommendations for addressing them.

A specific objective of this scan of recent travel surveys is to facilitate the exchange of information among agencies and individuals having an interest in the design and conduct of household and other types of travel surveys. The information contained in this report complements the companion "Travel Survey Manual", published as part of the Travel Model Improvement Program (TMIP). The "Travel Survey Manual" is a reference document describing accepted practices and recent advancements for the most common types of travel surveys. Four purposes guided the development of this scan: to determine the general state-of-the-practice of travel surveys in this country; to identify the types of surveys being conducted, and the frequency of data collection; to compare United States survey practices to travel survey procedures being used in other countries; and, to assess the degree to which emerging state-of-the-art survey techniques are being introduced into practice.