BTS Survey Programs
At the request
of BTS, a committee operating under the auspices of TRB and the Committee on National Statistics was charged with reviewing BTS’s survey programs in light of transportation data needs for policy, planning, and research, as well as the characteristics and functions of an effective statistical agency. In its report, the committee focused on the agency’s flagship surveys: the National Household Travel Survey, which combines the former Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (short-distance travel) and the American Travel Survey (long-distance travel), and the Commodity Flow Survey (CFS) (Special Report 277: Measuring Personal Travel and Goods Movement: A Review of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ Survey Programs; TRB/CNSTAT 2003).
The committee identified opportunities for BTS to improve its personal travel surveys in terms of both their value to a wide range of users and the quality of the data provided. To help deal with low response rates and other issues affecting data reliability and quality, the committee recommended that BTS consider developing a family of personal travel surveys aimed at meeting the needs of a variety of users.
The CFS plays a unique role for BTS in collecting information about nationwide freight shipments, but gaps in commodity detail and industry coverage limit its usefulness for a variety of emerging applications. The reduced sample size of the most recent survey compounds these limitations. Recognizing that a broader freight data architecture is needed for the future than that provided by the CFS, the committee nonetheless recommended continuation of the CFS until a better alternative is available. For the next CFS, the committee recommended investigating new survey methods that might reduce the cost of conducting the survey and allow BTS to increase the CFS sample size, establishing better mechanisms for eliciting suggestions and input from data users, and developing a more effective partnership with the Bureau of the Census, which conducts the CFS with funding provided by BTS.