FHWA Study Tour for National Surveys

FHWA-PL-95-003

In October 1993, a team of Federal, State, and local officials visited major centers in Europe where substantial national travel survey activities have been undertaken. Among the purposes of the visits were to seek out innovative methodological approaches to transportation survey design and operations, to review European experiences with different kinds of institutional arrangements, and to investigate new ideas in survey content and new collection methods. The countries visited included: The United Kingdom Denmark The Netherlands Sweden France Germany

Information obtained in these visits will have direct and immediate application in the United States. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), under the leadership of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), will be designing and conducting the Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS) in 1995. In addition, the Department's new Bureau of Transportation Statistics will also be conducting a major survey of long-distance travel, the American Travel Survey, in 1995. These surveys represent major financial investments by the DOT. Any experience that can be converted into greater efficiency or program improvement will be highly cost-effective.

While the primary benefits of the field visits of the Travel Survey Panel will be the detailed evaluation of survey design and operations experience and in the wealth of supporting materials obtained in meetings with European counterparts, there are valuable broader perspectives that were obtained and can be identified at this early stage. This report documents some of the broad observations and comments of the study team, based on their six country visits. They are divided into the three discussion areas employed in the visits: institutions, content, and methods.

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