SUMMARY OF 1990 CENSUS DATA USES AND NATIONAL EXPERIENCE

There were two important outcomes from the 1994 conference. The first is the Mapbook for Transportation Planning (FHWA, Dec. 1994). The second is the Bureau of Transportation Statistics' Implications of Continuous Measurement for the Uses of Census Data in Transportation Planning (April 1996). Journey-to-work travel still represents the largest segment of daily long-distance trips, excluding vacation trips. In 1990, the Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS) estimated that the average work trip was 9.5 miles and accounted for 36% of the vehicle miles of travel in urbanized areas. Thus, understanding the journey to work is still very important in transportation planning, even if the census questionnaire does not include all daily travel. In terms of uses of census data at the national level, three come to mind: national consistency, household travel surveys, and transit markets. The remainder of this paper examines the use of census data in each of these three areas.