Business Travel is 16 Percent of All U.S. Long-Distance Trips; ‘Business
Class’ is Usually the Driver’s Seat, New BTS Report Says
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BTS 25-03
Roger Lotz
202-366-2246 |
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Monday, November 3, 2003 - Sixteen percent of U.S. trips of more than 50 miles
from home are for business, according to a new report on National Household
Travel Survey (NHTS) findings released today by the Bureau of Transportation
Statistics (BTS).
“America
on the Go… U.S. Business Travel,” reports that more than 405
million long-distance business trips are taken each year in the U.S. Four out
of five business trips are taken by automobile, making the driver’s seat
the preferred form of “business class travel.” Almost three out
of four business trips are less than 250 miles and only one out of 14 business
trips is more than 1,000 miles.
This joint project of the BTS and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA),
also found:
- 81 percent of long-distance business trips in the U.S. are taken by personal
vehicle;
- The average one-way distance for a business trip is 123 miles, longer than
for any other trip purpose; and
- Air travel accounts for 16 percent of all business travel.
The report profiles the typical business traveler as:
- Male – men make 77 percent of business trips;
- Age 30 to 49 – this age group takes 55 percent of business trips;
- A professional, managerial or technical worker – people in these
occupations take 53 percent of business trips; and
- Having a household income of more than $75,000 – people in this income
group make 45 percent of business trips.
The NHTS, conducted in 2001 and 2002, gives a picture of travel in the U.S.
at the start of the 21st century. Combining new long-distance travel information
with short-distance data released earlier this year, it is the most comprehensive
survey of travel in the United States since 1995 — offering information
on who travels, why they travel, where they travel and how they travel. For
this report, only the long-distance trip data from the NHTS was analyzed.
The NHTS collected information about a wide range of topics, including the
amount and purpose of travel, the uses of different travel modes, time and miles
spent traveling and the ownership and use of vehicles in the United States.
It also examines the relationships between travel and specific household and
demographic characteristics. Over the next several months, BTS and FHWA will
be releasing additional NHTS data on these and other areas.
For this survey a nationally representative sample of about 26,000 households
was contacted and 60,000 individuals were interviewed. The NHTS is the successor
to the 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey and American Travel Survey.
“America
on the Go… U.S. Business Travel”, findings from the National
Household Travel Survey can be found at www.bts.gov. Quick
Facts on Business Travel are also available.
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