Urban Travel in Texas: An Overview of Travel Surveys (1099-1)

In an effort to identify current travel characteristics and the changes that have occurred, in 1990 the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) approved funding for travel surveys in San Antonio, Amarillo, Brownsville, Tyler, and Sherman-Denison. These surveys were designed to update models used to estimate travel demands and the impact of those demands on air quality and energy consumption. The models in use prior to initiating the surveys, with two exceptions, were based on information gathered in origin-destination surveys conducted in the late 1960's and early 1970's. The information obtained in these surveys is critical for monitoring changes in travel characteristics and for projecting travel demands in the future.|This report presents an overview of the major surveys done in 1990 and, where possible, the surveys done in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the Houston-Galveston area, and the Texarkana area. This report also presents a comparison between the travel characteristics observed in the origin-destination surveys conducted in the 1960's and 1970's and the characteristics observed in the most recent surveys.