2011 Atlanta, Georgia, Regional Travel Survey

To improve regional travel demand forecasts, the 2011 Regional Travel Survey collected trip data from households across 20 counties in and around Atlanta, Georgia.

Data Collection Agency

On behalf of the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), the survey was conducted by PTV NuStats, GeoStats, and PG Americas Inc.

Methodology

The goal was to collect trip data from a minimum of 10,000 households with a sub-sample of 1,000 households providing global positioning system (GPS) data. The GPS add-on consisted of two sample groups. The first sample group was provided with GPS devices to install in their personal vehicles (797 vehicles) to collect the speed and location of a vehicle during an assigned study period. The second sample group (1,653 participants) was provided with a wearable GPS device to collect the speed and location of an individual during an assigned study period. People participating in the wearable add-on part of the study were chosen because their travel diaries reported use of public transit in day-to-day travel. Each GPS participant was grouped into either the spring phase (March to May 2011) or the fall phase (July to September 2011), and data were recorded for a maximum of seven days for vehicle units and three days for wearable units.

Drive Cycle Processing and Filtering

NREL has developed a GPS data filtration routine to filter erroneous data points in individual drive cycles sourced from GPS devices mounted in vehicles. Second-by-second drive cycle data collected from GPS-instrumented vehicles during this survey have passed through NREL's drive cycle processing and filtering routines.

Survey Records

Survey records include 25,797 participants.

More Information

For more information about the survey, see the ARC Regional Travel Survey Final Report.

Transportation Data

The ARC data set contains data from 10,864 households that participated in one or more areas of the study. Of these, 10,278 completed the travel diary survey portion, 661 completed the wearable GPS portion, and 1,277 completed the vehicle GPS portion of the study. For details on available data and variable definitions, see the data dictionary.

NREL-generated drive cycle data are also available for this survey. For details on available data and variable definitions, see the drive cycle data dictionary.

Transportation data are available as zipped files. Download Winzip.

For the study's latitude and longitude data, learn how to access the spatial data.

How to Cite the Data

If you use TSDC data in a publication, please contact us and include a citation in your publication consistent with the following format:

"Transportation Secure Data Center." [(year)]. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Accessed [date]: www.nrel.gov/tsdc.