Passenger Travel Facts and Figures 2014

Description:
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) today released Passenger Travel Facts and Figures 2014, a snapshot of the characteristics and trends of personal travel in the United States; the network over which passenger travel takes place; and the related economic, safety, and environmental implications. The 77-page report summarizes the basic demographic and economic characteristics of the United States that contribute to the demand for passenger travel; examines travel patterns by trip purpose, transportation mode, and household characteristics; provides a picture of the passenger transportation system in 2005 and 2011 and summarizes movement on the system by transportation mode and congestion impacts; discusses the economic characteristics of passenger travel and tourism and discusses the safety, energy, and environmental impacts of passenger travel. It is intended as a companion to Freight Facts and Figures, which is produced jointly by BTS and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).

Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics

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Quantified Traveler: Travel Feedback Meets the Cloud to Change Behavior

Abstract:

We describe the design and evaluation of a system named Quantified Traveler (QT). QT is a Computational Travel Feedback System. Travel Feedback is an established programmatic method whereby travelers record travel in diaries, and meet with a counselor who guides her to alternate mode or trip decisions that are more sustainable or otherwise beneficial to society, while still meeting the subject’s mobility needs. QT is a computation surrogate for the counselor. Since counselor costs can limit the size of travel feedback programs, a system such as QT at the low costs of cloud computing, could dramatically increase scale, and thereby sustainable travel. QT uses an app on the phone to collect travel data, a server in the cloud to process it into travel diaries and then a personalized carbon, exercise, time, and cost footprint. The subject is able to see all of this information on the web. We evaluate with 135 subjects to learn if subjects let us use their personal phones and data-plans to build travel diaries, whether they actually use the website to look at their travel information, whether the design creates pro-environmental shifts in psychological variables measured by entry and exit surveys, and finally whether the revealed travel behavior records reduced driving. Before and after statistical analysis and the results from a structural equation model suggest that the results are a qualified success.

Source: University of California Transportation Center via eScholarship Repository
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