SURVEY SET TO EXAMINE FRONT RANGE TRAVEL PATTERNS
28 Jul 2009
by: Aaron Fodge
CONTACT: Aaron Fodge Marty Burgess
North Front Range Metropolitan Denver Regional Council
Planning Organization of Governments
(970) 224-6162 (303) 480-6706
afodge@nfrmpo.org mburgess@drcog.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 28, 2009
SURVEY SET TO EXAMINE FRONT RANGE TRAVEL PATTERNS
Begins in North Front Range area
About 1,500 households in the north Front Range area have a unique opportunity beginning in August to help their community by participating in the Front Range Travel Counts survey. For those who have ever wondered how they might influence the traffic they put up with every day, this is a chance to play a part in solving the problem!
Front Range Travel Counts is the first in-depth study of urban household travel behavior along Colorado’s Front Range, from Fort Collins to Pueblo. From this August through the fall of 2010, the four Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) along the Front Range will randomly ask approximately 12,000 households to identify where and how each member of the household traveled on a specific, designated travel day (24 hours). The MPOs include the North Front Range Metropolitan Planning Organization, the Denver Regional Council of Governments, the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments, and the Pueblo Area Council of Governments. The Colorado Department of Transportation and the Regional Transportation District also are survey partners. The cost of the household survey for Front Range is about $2 million.
Front Range Travel Counts will be conducted in the North Front Range region first, beginning in August and running through the fall. Front Range Travel Counts will randomly call households to participate. Once enrolled, participants will receive a travel diary and instructions for recording travel. To ensure the study reaches a representative sample, each household also will be asked about access to transportation and socioeconomic characteristics.
Household travel diary surveys are valuable because they gather data on a large number of households and household members, and the trips that those particular individuals make on a specific day. The survey doesn’t ask for opinions; it asks what people did. This enables transportation planners to tie individual and household characteristics to the trips actually made, seeing how, for instance, the number of automobiles a household owns or having small children in a household affects daily activities.
Data from the survey will help the MPOs build fuller, more accurate pictures of local transportation needs and estimate how much travel is generated by all households along the Front Range. The outputs of travel models built with the survey data will reveal regional travel patterns and behavior, which can help local, state and federal officials make informed transportation decisions by evaluating and prioritizing different regional projects for federal funding. In addition, communities need accurate models to be eligible to receive federal funding for their transportation projects.
For more information about the household survey, please visit www.nustats.com/FrontRange or call the survey hotline at 1-888-222-7734. Additional survey contacts include Arvilla Kirchhoff of the North Front Range Metropolitan Planning Organization, 970-224-6147 or akirchhoff@nfrmpo.org; Erik Sabina of the Denver Regional Council of Governments, 303-480-6789 or esabina@drcog.org; or Julie Paasche of NuStats, 1-800-447-8287, ext. 2241, or jpaasche@nustats.com.
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