CENSUS DATA IN TRANSPORTATION PLANNING, RUTLAND COUNTY, VERMONT

Recent experiences are described of a predominantly rural regional planning organization that is using data from the U.S. census for transportation planning purposes. These experiences include analyzing the statewide Census Transportation Planning Package to reveal journey-to-work trip patterns and to improve the calibration of the region's newly developed traffic forecasting model. In light of the planning organization's limited budget and staff, census transportation data proved essential to the timely completion of these tasks. The data also significantly increased policy makers' understanding of transportation issues and, when used in a fratar technique, vastly improved the usefulness of the traffic model. In general, any limitations of the census transportation data were easily overcome or were small relative to their advantages. Experience suggests that the Census Bureau should consider release of Urban Element data for very small metropolitan areas in the future.