Bicycle and Pedestrian Travel Demand Forcasting
Summary of Data Collection Activities
Source: Texas Transportation Institute, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)
The data were collected to help develop and test bicycle and pedestrian travel demand forecasting techniques. The research team collected data about actual bicycle and pedestrian facility usage rates (i.e., 12-hour volume counts) and trip characteristics (i.e., trip origin and destination, length, purpose, and frequency). The volume count and
survey data were collected on bicycle and pedestrian facilities in College Station, Austin, Houston, and Dallas.
The research team developed several preliminary findings from the data collection activities. The usage levels at data collection sites ranged from high-use side streets (Timber/Bizzell Street, Shoal Creek Boulevard) to highuse separated paths (Brays Bayou Trail and White Rock Lake Trail) to low-use state highways (FM 2818, RM 2222). Also, usage levels varied considerably for some sites during the three days of data collection. There was no apparent explanation for this day-to-day variability at some sites, but the research team will investigate this issue in future data analysis tasks. Useful information was gathered about bicycle and pedestrian trip generators
and trip length distributions. This trip information will be particularly useful for developing and testing demand forecasting models. Several of the sites had low survey response rates, which means that the trip information
gathered at these sites may not be representative of the entire bicycle and pedestrian population. The researchers may have to supplement sites having low survey response rates with information from other sites or studies.
