Exploring the Longest Trip: A New Look on the Impact of Long Road Trips on VMT

Long-distance road trips that may accumulate to a significant portion of the total household Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), are difficult to survey and therefore are under-reported and underestimated in travel behavior studies that focus on VMT forecasting and modeling. Understanding long trips is a critical part in understanding the impact of policies aimed to reduce VMT. Similarly long trips are critical in understanding the potential of battery electric vehicles which, in most cases, cannot travel long trips without long charging stops. This study explores new methods to survey long-distance road trips using a new web map survey method. The authors study one trip, the longest vehicle trip in the last 12 month. For 40% of the households in their study one long trip accounts for more than 5% of the annual gas used. For 20%, one long trip accounts for more than 5% of yearly miles. They show that long-distance road trips constitute a significant share of some household’s VMT, and this share is correlated with socio-demographic, location, travel behavior, and vehicle ownership characteristics. The main barriers to studying long-distance road trips are the rarity and complexity of these trips. The Web-map tool addresses limitations of conventional methods that focuses on long-distance trips.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABJ10 Standing Committee on National Transportation Data Requirements and Programs.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Tal, Gil
  • Nicholas, Michael A
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
• Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 12p
• Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Distance; Driving; Travel behavior; Trip length; Vehicle miles of travel
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01598962
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 16-2413
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: May 11 2016 12:03PM