Household Travel Survey: Baltimore Region, 2001

Approximately every 5 years, the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) conducts a national household survey that is used to measure demographic and household travel characteristics used to evaluate national policies and assist researchers in understanding emerging travel trends. The USDOT allows states, local jurisdictions and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) to purchase additional local samples. The Baltimore Regional Transportation Board (BRTB), the designated MPO for the Baltimore metropolitan area, agreed to participate in the 2001 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) as an add-on. The NHTS would also allow the household travel within the Baltimore region to be compared to similar urban areas across the country, since all survey data and add-ons are collected in a similar fashion. The household survey was mainly focused on weekday travel, collecting a one day travel itinerary from 3,131 Baltimore region households. A smaller survey of 325 households was also sampled to obtain weekend travel behavior. Traditionally, travel activity has been focused on weekday travel associated with commuting as a primary concern. Recently, non-work related travel has rivaled commuting with some locations in the Baltimore region having the greatest one hour peak volume on weekends. A smaller weekend sample was selected to start the process of understanding the travel choices being made and to establish a baseline to measure change. Demographic variables include the respondent's age, sex, employment status, occupation, education level, household income, place of birth, relationship to the reference person, whether the respondent is a licensed driver, and whether respondents have a medical condition.