Data Reuse Methods for Transportation Planning in Small- and Medium-Sized Towns

Abstract

Small and medium sized towns often lack resources for the data collection required by many transportation planning methods. In many cases, though, data from a regional or national source may be transferred to the small town or used in the form of national averages. We focus on the case of towns on the fringe of large metropolitan areas and compare various data reuse techniques. We defined a quantitative categorization method that indicates for a given town if local data transfer or national data transfer is preferable. The analysis is based on two surveys of North Carolina metropolitan areas and their surroundings (Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham) representing 5,000 households in 90 municipalities ranging in size from a few hundred population to half a million. Our results show that planners working in FRINGE towns can defensibly use the NCHRP 365 trip rates dictated by the nearby urban center, or existing trip rates derived from surveys of the urban center itself.