Descriptive Analysis of Long-Distance Travel by Personal Vehicles Using 2004 Commute Atlanta Data

Long-distance travel constitutes a sizeable portion of total travel in the nation. Knowledge about long-distance travel patterns is important to identify characteristics of current use of the nation’s transportation system, forecast future demand, analyze alternatives for investment in and development of the system, and assess the effects of legislation and regulations on the transportation system. This paper analyzes long-distance travel by personal vehicles of 102 households over a period of 12 months based on the 2004 Commute Atlanta instrumented vehicle panel dataset. This paper focuses on frequency, mileage, duration, day of week variation and seasonal variability of long-distance travel. The authors found out even though long-distance related travel has a relatively small share of all trips (7%), it represents a much larger share of the total miles traveled (23%). Using a 50-mile linear one-way criterion, the sample households made an average of 6 long-distance tours per household per year. The authors observed day-of-