National surveys conducted by multiple agencies throughout the Federal Government capture details on how and why people travel and use the transportation networks within the United States. This report utilizes many sources to draw a complete picture of passenger travel; however, the data collected as part of three surveys were especially useful for devel­oping many of the tables, figures, and analyses: the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), the American Community Survey (ACS), and the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Included below are details on each of these surveys.

National Household Travel Survey (NHTS)

The NHTS, conducted by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), is a telephone survey of the civilian, noninsti­tutionalized population of the United States. As such, an eligible household excludes motels; hotels; group quarters such as nursing homes, prisons, barracks, convents, or monasteries; and any living quarters with 10 or more unrelated room­mates. The precursor to the NHTS was first administered in 1969 as the Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS).

In 2001 the effort was expanded and renamed the National Household Travel Survey. Prior surveys were conducted in 1969, 1977, 1983, 1990, and 1995. The 2009 NHTS was conducted from March 2008 through May 2009. Travel days were assigned for all seven days of the week, including all holidays. The survey data were weighted to a 12-month period to produce annual estimates of travel. In April 2016, USDOT began its year-long effort to collect data for the 2016 NHTS. For more information refer to http://nhts.ornl.gov.

American Community Survey (ACS)

The ACS, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, began in 1995 with a sample of counties across the country. Today the survey is conducted in all U.S. counties and in Puerto Rico, where it is called the Puerto Rico Community Survey. De­signed as a replacement for the Census long form, the ACS is a continuous monthly survey and provides annual and multi­year estimates. Most of the questions in the survey are the same (or similar) to those of the Census 2000 long form. The ACS provides critical economic, social, demographic, and housing information to this country’s communities every year.

One of the key transportation-related modules in the ACS is the “Journey to Work” section. To gauge how American’s are traveling to work, the ACS asks respondents (each household member) what their usual way to work was for the week prior to the survey. Respondents are given a variety of modal options to choose from. In addition to journey to work information, the ACS also provides data on household vehicle availability, which is another key transportation variable.

Special tabulations, known as the Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP), are also produced from the ACS data for transportation planners. The CTPP is a set of special tabulations designed by transportation planners using large sample surveys conducted by the Census Bureau. From 1970 to 2000, the CTPP and its predecessor, the Urban Transpor­tation Planning Package, used data from the decennial census long form. The decennial census long form has now been replaced with a continuous survey called the ACS. Therefore, the CTPP now uses the ACS sample for the special tabula­tion. The first CTPP was tabulated using 2006–2010 ACS data.

For more information on the ACS, refer to http://www.census.gov/acs/. More information on the CTPP can be found at: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census_issues/ctpp/.

American Time Use Survey (ATUS)

The ATUS provides nationally representative estimates of how, where, and with whom Americans spend their time and is the only Federal survey providing data on the full range of nonmarket activities, from childcare to volunteering. In the time diary portion of the ATUS interview, survey respondents sequentially report activities they did between 4 a.m. on the day before the interview (“yesterday”) until 4 a.m. on the day of the interview. For each activity, respondents are asked how long the activity lasted. Data collected in the ATUS includes the overall average time the population spends traveling on selected activities as well as averages for the subpopulation that engages in selected activities (e.g., omitting persons who did not participate in each activity).

ATUS data files are used by researchers to study a broad range of issues; the data files include information collected from over 136,000 interviews conducted from 2003 to 2013. For more information on the ATUS, refer to http://www.bls.gov/ tus/news.htm.