State of the Practice of Long Distance and Intercity Travel Modeling in US Metropolitan Planning Organizations and State Departments of Transportation

Abstract

Long distance and intercity travel represent a small percentage of total trips in the U.S., yet they represent a large percentage of total VMT. Long distance trips represent an important travel market with over $317 billion in business-travel and $718 billion in leisure travel profits in 2017. Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and State Department of Transportation (DOTs) are responsible for developing the Long-Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) and Statewide Transportation Plan, respectively. Within these plans, future infrastructure and funding investment is defined based on model estimation from past, current, and future travel and socio-economic variables. Currently, the lack of guidance in long distance travel modeling has derived concerns among practitioners and scholars. Therefore, two national state-of-practice surveys on long distance travel modeling were conducted among MPOs and State DOTs to gain insight in long distance travel modeling among these agencies. The purpose of this thesis is to draw recommendation for future guidance on long distance travel.