The Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) serves a planning area population of 395,174 in fifteen member cities and portions of three member counties. The Des Moines Area MPO chose to purchase 1,200 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) add-on surveys for a four-county area. Before participation in the 2001 NHTS add-on program, the last time the Des Moines area had collected extensive travel data was in the 1960s. An essential use of the 2001 NHTS add-on data in the Des Moines metropolitan area is in the Des Moines area MPO's Travel Demand Model. Querying the 7,506 vehicle trips from the NHTS data to discern non-home-based, home-based other, and home-based work trip percentages is valuable to assigning trip types to the Travel Demand Model. Other general travel information determined from the 2001 NHTS add-on data included the length of time people travel to work, vehicle occupancies by trip type, vehicle miles driven annually, and most frequently traveled days. The Iowa DOT and the Des Moines Area MPO joined equally to purchase the 2001 NHTS add-on data. This partnership means the ability to apply, share, and transfer the Des Moines metropolitan area NHTS add-on data and statistics to the rest of Iowa. The Des Moines Area MPO found the NHTS add-on survey to be a useful tool in calibrating and validating the Travel Demand Model and offering an accurate description of travel in the Des Moines metropolitan area.
Abstract