SUPPORTING STATEMENT Parts A March 2021 FINAL

Supporting Statement

Next Generation National Household Travel Survey

This is a request for an Office of Management and Budget (OMB)-approved clearance for the reinstatement of a periodic information collection entitled “Next Generation National Household Travel Survey” (NextGen NHTS).

Part A.

Justification

1. Circumstances that Make Collection of Information Necessary

The NHTS is the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT’s) nationally representative data source for daily local and long-distance passenger travel. This inventory of travel behavior reflects travel mode (private vehicle, public transportation, pedestrian, and cycling) and trip purpose (travel to work, school, recreation, and personal/family trips) by U.S. household residents. Survey results are used by Federal, State, and local agencies to monitor the performance and adequacy of current transportation facilities and infrastructure and to plan for future needs. Data from the NHTS are also included in the biennial reports to Congress on the performance of the Nation’s surface transportation system.

The collection and analysis of national transportation data have been of critical importance for over half a century. Previous surveys were conducted in 1969, 1977, 1983, 1990, 1995, 2001, 2009, and 2017. The NHTS is the only national source of data on how travel behavior of the American public is changing as demographic, economic, and cultural changes are taking place in the country.

Title 23 U.S.C, Section 502 authorizes USDOT to carry out advanced research to measure the performance of the surface transportation systems, including the efficiency, energy use, air quality, congestion, and safety of the highway and intermodal operations. USDOT is charged with the overall responsibility to obtain current information on national travel patterns through establishing a database to understand travel behavior, evaluate the use of transportation facilities, and gauge the impact of USDOT’s policies and programs.

Data from the NHTS are used to support broad ranges of topics ranging from answering inquiries from Congress, Administration, public and various organizations and associations, offering information for program and project developments at USDOT, and State and local agencies, to enabling research and development activities at academic institutions, private businesses, and other associations and organizations. Some recent topics of interest include the following:

• Travel-to-work patterns by mode for infrastructure improvements and congestion reduction.

• Access to public transit, paratransit, and rail services by various demographic groups.

• Trip rates by different social and demographic data dimensions.

• Incidence of vehicle ownership at various income levels.

• Measures of travel by mode to establish exposure rates for highway safety analyses.

• Bike and walk travel for safety, health measures, and environmental concerns.

• Emerging travel modes, such as dockless bikeshares, e-scooters, and other urban mobility devices.

• The proliferation of Internet-enabled ride-hailing apps.

• The increase in online home delivery services for food, groceries, and household goods and their impact on travel behavior.

• Support for Federal, State, and local planning activities and policy evaluation. Within USDOT, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) relies on NHTS data to carry out its Federal-aid highway program responsibility. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Federal Transit Administration, and Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) are also primary data users and have historically participated in project planning and financial support.

2. How, by Whom, and for What Purpose is the Information Used

Since 1969, FHWA’s NHTS has been providing insights into the daily travel of Americans across the Nation. The information derived from the NHTS offers systematic information on the national travel demand, enables FHWA to support legislative activities, and carries out its legal responsibility related to the Federal-aid highway program. Historically, data collection was conducted every 5 to 8 years.

The NHTS is an agency legacy data program supported by FHWA’s overall research and development initiative. The latest Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act mandates FHWA to gather the information.

The NHTS documents the who, what, when, why, and how of daily personal travel. The data collected provide details on a range of topics like daily travel modal splits, trip purposes, trip rates, travel patterns by age cohort, trends in how children get to and from school, and how travel differs for those living in rural versus urban areas.

The NHTS data serve many purposes. In addition to these areas discussed in Section 1, the data also enables the understanding of current demand on highways and streets by different modes of travel, offers an empirical base for future travel demand projections for planning purposes, provides a reference point for performance measurements, and enables FHWA to perform scenario-based program analyses regarding potential effectiveness of different programs. Moreover, the NHTS provides nuanced social and geodemographic data to support various research on travel safety, transportation equity, and modal choices.

With each NHTS data collection cycle, the survey instrument attempts to maintain its core structure and data items covering the basic characteristics of daily travel, while new questions are added to accommodate emerging issues associated with travel. This arrangement ensures time–series analysis while capturing contemporary travel demand issues.

For example, the 2001 NHTS collected long-distance travel in addition to its historical local travel focus. However, since then, long-distance travel has been left out of the program due to budget constraints. The 2017 NHTS included core questions about trip purpose, travel mode, and time of day of travel, as well as new questions on emerging topics like Internet shopping, ridesharing, car- and bike-sharing, health status, and levels of physical activity.

Technology has greatly impacted not only travel behavior but also travel data collection approaches. Over the past 5 years, new travel modes and Internet-based activities replacing actual physical travel have been occurring faster than ever. Effective transportation policy and programs need to be based on timely knowledge and understanding of how people are traveling and how the travel behavior is changing. Specifically, data and information related to the quantifications of shifts in the frequency of travel, trip purpose, time of day of travel, vehicle ownership patterns, fuel efficiency and emissions, effects from home-based deliveries, and relations linking the travel behavior to demographic and social characteristics are key to informing travel behavior trends. Regarding the timeliness of the NHTS data, the 2017 NHTS is already considered to be outdated in the following areas:

• Rideshare: In 2015, during the design stage for the 2017 NHTS, rideshare was anticipated to operate the same as taxis. Since then, the use of rideshare as a travel mode has significantly evolved, alongside its increased acceptance across a wider range of age and income groups than previously thought. There is no publicly available data to explain the current rideshare phenomenon, only what existed 4 years ago, which impedes planners’ and policymakers’ abilities to understand where and how rideshare usage complements or substitutes for other forms of transit.

• Emergence of electric scooters (e-scooters): The e-scooter as a travel mode emerged on streets in late 2017. There are no existing national sources of data that can explain how and why e-scooters are being used, only reports of where they are being used. As a result, critical assumptions are being made about the demographics of users and motivations behind using an e-scooter rather than walking. More importantly, assumptions are being made about how e-scooter usage integrates with transit trips in regions where both modes are available.

• Increased teleworking levels: The NHTS offers information on the change in trip frequency and purpose among teleworkers. Prior to the current pandemic, assumptions were being made that teleworkers did not travel on their telework days. The 2017 NHTS showed that while teleworkers may not commute to work, they did make household-related trips during the workday. We currently do not know if this trend has continued or if online shopping has mitigated the needs for those workday trips. With the shift to teleworking in response to the pandemic, there is a critical need to understand the implications of a changing telework landscape on travel pattern forecasts.

• Explosion of eCommerce: Since 2017, the emergence of grocery and food delivery services using privately owned vehicles has increased dramatically. This growing change is not fully reflected in the 2017 NHTS to determine if such services will replace trips otherwise made by households. More importantly, questions related to who makes these deliveries using their private vehicles, and how such work-related travel fits into the other travel made by these delivery drivers can’t be answered.

Challenged by the rapid changes in transportation technology and travel behavior, FHWA has explored the proposed redesign for NextGen NHTS, which aims to gain timely national data to understand how travel demand is evolving. With the NextGen NHTS, the survey will focus on targeted data that can be collected in a timelier manner and disseminated faster. In addition, relevant key data that can be collected more frequently to keep up with the accelerating changes in the digital age while reducing burden on survey participants.

3. Extent of Automated Information Collection

The NextGen NHTS will include two independent yet parallel surveys. The main survey will be a probability-based sample of households selected from an address-based sample (ABS) frame representative of the entire United States (ABS study). The second independent data gathering effort will survey U.S. households selected from an online probability-based panel which was initially recruited from the same ABS frame. This second data gathering effort will be referred to as the Panel Frame Sample Study, or PFS study. The PFS is so named to reflect the fact that the study’s sample will be drawn from an existing online probability-based panel that was developed by the survey contractor for use in fielding national surveys.

Data collected from the ABS study will serve as the official statistical information, while data and information gathered from the PFS study will be used to study the validity and feasibility of utilizing the PFS approach in future NHTS administrations. Respondents from both studies will be directed to an automated web-based data retrieval program to complete the survey; however, the resulting data will be maintained in separate databases.

Recent estimates suggest 85-90% of U.S. adults have access to the Internet^1,2, representing a fundamental shift in how Americans connect with one another, gather information, and conduct their day-to-day lives. The NextGen NHTS will employ a multi-mode survey design that uses web-based and mail data collection modes. The approach for each study includes the following:

• For the ABS study, participating households will be directed to an online survey system to capture household information and core travel data. Paper versions of the questionnaire and trip diary will be offered for households where there are no Internet services.

• Households participating in the PFS study will be directed to complete the survey online.

Follow-ups with nonresponding households from both surveys will be through mail, telephone, and email communications where contact information is available and the contact method is appropriate. Survey support options for both sample groups will include both phone and email options.

The online system, with its built-in edit checks and subroutines to minimize the respondent burden associated with completing the survey, will be used to collect self-reported data from respondents in both studies. The same online system will be used to input the surveys received by mail. The automated information collection will include:

• A dedicated website and custom software to enable the main household respondent to complete a household roster of persons and vehicles and then allow each household member to self-report travel activity.

• Appropriate prompts and sophisticated question branching and skip patterns to facilitate accurate reporting and only present respondents with questions that are necessary and appropriate for that respondent.

• Look-up tables to facilitate the reporting of vehicle make and model information.

• Household rostering (i.e., the listing of all vehicles and persons in the household) and a shared-trip reporting feature that allows a trip report from one household member that includes another (e.g., spouses who travel to dinner together) to be inserted into the second person’s record, reducing reporting burden by not requiring respondents to
  re-report trips already reported by another household member.

• Real-time data range, consistency and edit checks programmed to reduce reporting error, survey length, and maintenance of the flow of information processing.

• Integrated data consistency checks to ensure that the details entered pass basic data completeness and consistency requirements.

• A Google Maps application programming interface-enabled search engine to assist in identifying specific place names and locations.

For both studies, data collection will be comprised of 12 monthly data collection periods to provide coverage for an entire year of travel behavior. Each monthly sample release will be further targeted to obtain a near-even distribution of travel diary dates across the week in order to provide coverage of travel behavior for each day of the week.

The ABS study will utilize a five-step communication design consisting of an initial invitation mailed to all sampled addresses, followed by two mailed postcards and two mailed letters for all nonresponding households (Appendix 5). These communications will be created using the industry standard Tailored Design Method.³ Within these custom communications, respondents will be encouraged to participate in the NextGen NHTS using an online interface to both maximize the respondent experience and to ensure the highest quality data possible.

As previously noted, when potential respondents are unable to access the Internet, they will be given the option to complete a paper-based questionnaire. After completing these paper-based questionnaires, respondents will be able to mail the surveys back to the vendor, free of charge, where their answers will be recorded using the same survey interface as those completing the survey online. These mail-back surveys will be tracked, and the entered responses will be subject to the same quality control procedures as the online completed surveys to ensure their accuracy.

The PFS study materials will utilize a four-step communication design consisting of a pre-notification email, followed by the invitation email, a reminder email, and a partial complete reminder email (Appendix 6).

As noted, data collected from the ABS study will serve as the official statistical information, while data and information gathered from the PFS study will be used to study the validity and feasibility of utilizing a PFS sample to measure travel behavior for future NHTS administrations. While the same questionnaire (Appendix 7) and online system will be used for both studies, the resultant data will be stored in separate data sets.

4. Efforts to Identify Duplication

The NHTS is the sole source of information on mode use for all purposes by the American public, and it is also a key component of the major Federal datasets that were designed to maximize information utility while identifying and eliminating duplication. The complementary data collection programs frequently used in concert with the NHTS include the Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS), American Community Survey (ACS), and tourism and traveler surveys such as those collected by the Travel Industry Association.

Estimates of passenger and commercial vehicle miles traveled on various roadways are the focus of the HPMS. FHWA aggregates traffic data from all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico to measure the use of the highway system and the volume of travel. These data are enhanced by the ability of the NHTS to estimate the proportion of all roadway travel that is generated by personal passenger travel versus commercial or freight and the stratifications with relevant social and demographical information. The NHTS also enhances HPMS data through its ability to describe the demographics of travelers, trip purpose, and travel party size. Such information cannot be collected from the simple travel counts generated through the HPMS.

The NHTS program and the Census Bureau closely collaborate, especially in developing the Journey to Work data that are part of the ACS. The Census Bureau has collected data limited to “typical” work trip mode and travel time since 1960. The work trip data collected by the NHTS include actual travel time and mode characteristics on the assigned travel day. The NHTS also collects descriptive information on all other types of trips—data that not available from any other source. Previous NHTS surveys indicate that work trips account for about 17 percent of all trips for all people; even for adults in the workforce, the trip to work is only one of four trips made on an average day.

A number of Federal agencies, including USDOT’s FHWA and BTS, are also using passively collected data (e.g., Global Positioning System (GPS), location-based services (LBS), etc.) for more real-time insights into travel patterns. However, such data lack socio-demographic and behavioral attributes and require extrapolations and imputations to approximate the granular information NHTS furnishes. These ancillary data sources include the following:

• FHWA’s monthly Traffic Volume Trends reports: FHWA provides monthly reports summarizing hourly traffic count data reported by the States. These data are collected at approximately 5,000 continuous traffic-counting locations nationwide. While designed to measure traffic volume, the resulting data cannot provide critical details about the travelers, their destinations, reasons for travel, modes of travel, or even time of day of travel.

• FHWA’s weekly Traffic Volume reports: Data from these weekly reports include interstate traffic only derived from permanently installed traffic-monitoring roadway sensors and other passive data observations. Again, the resulting data provide traffic volumes but offer no insight about who is traveling where, for what reasons, by what mode or what time of day.

• BTS mobility data tracking: These data are captured by the University of Maryland’s passive data product. This data product parses the data streams from GPS and LBS devices and modeled trip purpose and mode.

• BTS survey-based data programs: BTS, in partnership with the Census Bureau, carries out two survey data collection programs: the Commodity Flow Survey and the Vehicle Inventory and Use Survey.

• BTS Bikeshare Location and Ridership databases: These databases maintained by BTS provide non-systematic location and ridership information; however, they do not offer any demographic details needed to ascertain who the riders are. The data are based on administrative data shared by willing local agencies.

• BTS COVID-19-related data: These data are sourced from private data providers and not through a survey; they are intended primarily for internal agency information purposes.

• BTS Local Area Transportation Characteristics for Households dataset: This dataset was created by BTS modeling the NHTS data and then synthesizing the results based on geodemographic characteristics from the NHTS and ACS datasets to extrapolate results for all Census tracts.

• ACS: This survey is conducted annually to capture work trip details for typical work trips only and only captures the dominant mode of travel to work, not all interim modes used. In addition, the ACS does not provide any details about actual work trips and does not capture any information about nonwork trips.

The translation of the passive data points into trips and the ascription of attributes, such as demographics, travel mode, and trip purpose, all require source data to build and train algorithms. The NHTS provides the source training data and enables the agencies to use this otherwise one-dimensional data. Without input from the NHTS, the passive data quality, projectability, and reliability diminishes significantly.

5. Efforts to Minimize the Burden on Small Businesses

Small businesses are not being recruited to participate in this study. No information will be collected from small businesses.

6. Consequences of Data Not Being Collected or of Less Frequent Data Collection

As NHTS is the only source of national data on the travel of the American public by all modes and for all purposes, the administration, Congress, and USDOT would be missing essential information regarding key transportation indicators. These include mode share, travel demand, trip purpose distribution, and exposure levels that feed directly into transportation planning, safety analysis, program evaluation, highway finance evaluation, performance measurement, and policy development. Without the next survey in the series, the transportation community will lack recent information on the following:

• Changes in the purpose and type of travel related to decreases/increases in fuel costs. The Energy Information Agency appends current fuel data onto the NHTS, but changes in behavior related to the price of fuel require new travel information. In addition, the vehicle fleet is changing, and tracking the penetration and use of alternate fuel vehicles is important in revenue forecasting for USDOT.

• Changes on trip frequency by drivers by age, sex, ethnicity, and time of day. This has been used in applications from safety measures and program evaluation to long-range transportation planning.

• Travel behavior of millennials and other demographic groups. Millennials tend to live and work in the city and rely on walking, public transportation, and new services, such as ZipCar, Car2Go, Uber, and Bikeshare. Their rate of driver licensing and vehicle use is lower than previous demographic waves. Monitoring such trends is important to the environmental effects of transportation and to the potential future funding stream of the Highway Trust Fund.

• Impact of baby-boomers’ retirement and working past traditional retirement age. Important demographic changes are occurring in the users of the transportation system, affecting congestion, trip purpose, time of day of travel, and other information important to policy analysis.

• Measures of peak spreading and increases in midday and weekend travel. For many areas around the country, cold vehicle starts on Saturday afternoon are higher than any peak period during the weekday (expect Friday afternoon).

• Travel by special populations, such as the disabled, new immigrants, poor, and people without cars. These data are vital for evacuation planning, mobility, and safety.

• Effects of graduated licensing programs on teen driving. As more States use graduated licensing, the effect on vehicle occupancy, age, purpose, and time of day of travel are important to track.

• Updates to the default air quality and trip generation parameters used by local planners. These data feed local models that forecast travel demand for major investment studies, congestion pricing, new transit starts, and other local transportation improvements.

• Travel by recent vehicle and bike/scooter sharing uses. Travel by these modes has the potential to influence the trends in vehicle ownership and impact economic transportation trends.

As a data-driven agency, FHWA needs to continue its data-based decisionmaking with leadership in data collecting and disseminating. FHWA’s continued leadership at the Federal, State, and local levels will have an enormous impact on the safety, reliability, and accessibility of the Nation’s transportation system now and in the future.

Given the rapid changes in travel behavior and the ongoing need for current data to inform program effectiveness and improve reality-based planning work, more frequent administration of NHTS is inevitable. It is from this perspective that instead of relying on the original 5- to 8-year data collection cycle, the NextGen NHTS design will be administered every 2-4 years. This biennial design is more conducive to providing real-time information, reducing burdens, and promoting efficient program planning. The intent is to field the first cycle of the NextGen NHTS survey in 2021; the biennial cycle will begin once OMB approval is received.

7. Special Circumstances

There are no special circumstances.

8. Compliance with 5 CFR 1320.8(d)

Docket number FHWA-2019-0035 was established as a repository for comments received in response to the Federal Register 60-Day Notice and Request for Comments (Appendix 1) published on November 18, 2019, at volume 84, issue number 222, and page 63713. Two comments were submitted to the docket during this period.

The Federal Register 30-Day Notice (Appendix 2) was published on February 4, 2020. Two comments were submitted to the docket during this period.

An amended Federal Register 30-Day Notice (Appendix 3) was published on March 4, 2021, to reflect the use of two samples (ABS and online panel).

Efforts to Consult with Persons Outside the Agency

The NHTS and its predecessor, the National Personal Transportation Survey, have been in existence since the first survey in the series, conducted in 1969. Over that span of time, the NHTS user community has grown significantly. FHWA and data users have made use of technological changes to increase points of contact, coordination, feedback, and input to the next survey in the series.

The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Mathematics established a technical panel to provide technical feedback to the NHTS program with regard to both data collection and data utilization. In August 2018, the technical panel organized a workshop at the Keck Center in Washington in which 104 people attended from Federal, State, and local transportation agencies, academic institutions, and private businesses, sharing their experiences with the 2017 NHTS dataset. Researchers and practitioners presented preliminary findings from their research for feedback, insights, and suggestions for future NHTS deployments. The feedback from these sessions is summarized in Transportation Research Circular E-C238 (Appendix 8). Feedback from this diverse set of data users has shaped the future of the NHTS program and included a panel of speakers discussing the NextGen NHTS.

In December 2019, USDOT convened a meeting of State and local transportation agencies and researchers in Phoenix, AZ, to solicit inputs for the NextGen NHTS approach. Diverse attendees from State departments of transportation (Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia); local agencies and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) (Atlanta Regional Commission, Oahu MPO, Washington Council of Governments, and Maricopa Association of Governments); and Federal agencies (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory) were present at the meeting.

There is also active coordination with private groups and associations. The AARP Policy Institute is a strong user of the NHTS data for various analyses of senior mobility issues. AAA and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety are critical data users and participants of the programs. Other organizations the NHTS program coordinates with include the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and its Census Transportation Planning Products (CTPP) program, the Centers for Disease Control, and the American Public Transit Association.

Over the 51 years of its existence, the NHTS has developed an extensive network of public and private users through the interactive website and the user support staff. The program constantly receives input from its broad user community.

9. Payments or Gifts to Respondents

Incentives are an essential component of survey research. Determining a responsible level of incentives is vital to the success of the project. The incentive plan is designed to incrementally reward participation, which will lead to higher response rates and lower survey costs. Incentives in the proposed design are as follows:

• Monetary incentives will be provided for all ABS study households that complete the survey. As the burden is higher for those in households with more people, larger households will receive a larger incentive amount. Households will receive $5 per household member when all household members complete the travel survey.

• Each selected household in the PFS study will receive a $2 cash equivalent incentive for completing the household roster. Further, each selected household will receive an additional $5–$10 for successfully completing the reporting of household travel depending on household size.

10. Assurance of Confidentiality

To protect the identity of the respondents, the final data files will not contain names, addresses, telephone numbers, or other direct identifiers. The geography associated with travel will be aggregated to the metropolitan region level in the publicly available data files. Further, potentially identifying information such as ownership of unique vehicle make-model combinations, ages of individuals above a certain cutoff, and other like items will not be displayed on the public-use data file.

Confidentiality procedures will also be applied rigidly to all electronic files. Password systems will be maintained to ensure that only authorized staff members can access the files. Furthermore, physical access to the computer equipment will be restricted to authorized systems operations personnel. All project staff members will participate in annual training on legislation and guidelines concerning protection of human subjects and their right to privacy. The DOT will not have access to any personally identifiable information about respondents.

Informed consent procedures will be implemented for the NextGen NHTS. All survey respondents will be informed of the following: the enabling legislation for the study, the principal purposes for which the information is needed, the routine uses that will be made of the data collected, and that their participation is voluntary. The respondents will also be told that their responses will be held in the strictest confidence and that reports from the survey data will be summaries that do not allow individuals to be identified. A statement to this effect will be included in the introduction to the NextGen NHTS questionnaire.

There are two survey phases: (1) the completion of a household roster by the main household respondent and (2) the reporting of travel day trip-making by all household members (direct or by proxy).

Household Roster

Personal identification information will be necessary and used only for confirming that the respondents live at the sampled address. All household members will be enumerated, and the household respondent will be asked to provide their identities, age, gender, and driving status. The identity of each household member will be recorded as first names, nicknames, initials, numbers, or whatever the respondent chooses. These identifiers are used solely to link travel information to specific demographics, such as age and gender. All information will be collected on a secure Fed Ramp-approved server hosted by the contractor.

Travel Diary Data Collection

Participant travel information will be collected via a dedicated survey website developed specifically for the NextGen NHTS. Access to the survey portal will be controlled via the contractor’s online survey portal; only selected households can access the secure online travel diary. Those completing the survey by mail will return their completed forms in a postage-paid envelope.

11. Justification for Collection of Sensitive Information

Every effort has been made to reduce the number of sensitive questions in the NextGen NHTS survey while maintaining the collection of information vital to the program. There are several important questions that may be considered sensitive by some respondents.

An income question is included among other questions designed to identify socioeconomic characteristics that are essential to the travel analyses. It is necessary to collect income data because there is a direct correlation between travel behavior and the financial resources available to household members. The link between income and the amount of travel as well as the types of trips made is critical to analyzing current travel and forecasting future travel. Travel forecasting models most often use household size and income as prime determinants of forecasted travel.

Verification and collection of home and workplace location is requested from NextGen NHTS respondents. The home location will be available from the sample frame used to recruit the respondents and verified during the survey process. Primary work location will be asked for respondents indicating they are employed. These data allow for a connection with the Journey to Work data provided by the ACS as part of the CTPP, which is produced for and distributed to every State and MPO in the country. Journey to Work data have long been a staple of the transportation planning process, and such a link is a necessary element supplementing travel to work data with non-work data available in the NHTS.

Home and workplace location information also is needed to enhance the NHTS data with a profile of the home and workplace neighborhood characteristics from an outside source, such as Nielson Claritas. The connection between land use and transportation is a recurring issue and providing outside data on the neighborhood characteristics of the residence and the workplace has been an effective tool in promoting use of the NHTS data for research on this topic.

12. Estimate of Burden Hours for Information Requested

The respondent burden for the NextGen NHTS will result from the time spent responding to the questions in the survey household roster and completing the survey travel diary by recording details about each trip taken on an assigned day and then reporting these data via the web.

The survey contains questions that include household information for rostering and enumeration, the household’s owned motor vehicle information, and an interactive travel diary. The diary questions ask the respondent to record six items for each trip: where they went (e.g., home, work, or other), why they went (work, shop, school, etc.), the times the trips began and ended, the means of transportation, and who traveled with the respondent. Completion of the survey is expected to take an average of 20 minutes for the primary household contact and 15 minutes for each additional direct or proxy diary reported.

Frequency

This collection will be conducted every 2-4 years in the future.

Respondents

Two nationally representative random samples of 7,500 households (15,000 households total) from the ABS and PFS studies representing the 50 States and the District of Columbia will be surveyed. Given that each household will include an average of 2.5 members who are 5 years of age or older, travel data for a total of 18,750 individual respondents will be collected for the ABS survey, and an additional 18,750 individual respondents will complete the PFS survey.

Estimated Average Burden per Response

It will take approximately 5 minutes to complete the household roster data form and 15 minutes to complete the travel diary. This results in a total of 20 minutes for the first household member and 15 minutes per additional household member (these estimates are the same for both ABS and PFS study respondents).

Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours

_{It is estimated that a total of 18,750 persons will} be included in each study, for a total of 37,500 participants total across the ABS and PFS studies. This would result in approximately 10,625 hours of support for this data collection effort for both the ABS and PFS studies, assuming an average of 17 minutes per person across the household roster and travel diary.

Table 1. Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours

Respondent	n-Size	Time per Survey (minutes)	Total Time (minutes)	Total Time (hours)	Prevailing Wage	Total Burden
Primary household member	15,000	20	300,000	5,000	N/A	N/A
Additional household members	22,500	15	337,500	5,625	N/A	N/A
Total	N/A	N/A	637,500	10,625	$14.73	$156,506.25

N/A = Not applicable.

Prevailing Wage Rate derived from “Departmental Guidance on Valuation of Travel Time in Economic Analysis (2016 Revised Value of Travel Time Guidance.pdf (transportation.gov, Page 11) and updated to current dollars using the https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm.

13. Estimate of Total Annual Costs to Respondents

There are no costs to respondents beyond the 17-minute burden (on average) of completing the survey.

14. Estimate of the Cost to the Federal Government

Contract GS-00F-123DA was awarded to Ipsos on September 29, 2019, to design and conduct the survey at a cost of $1,223,891.48 with an upper ceiling of $11,212,366.56 if all contract options were to be executed.

The revised cost for the ABS and FPS survey is about $2,900,000.  The estimated cost to complete an independent third party analysis and evaluation of the ABS and FBS modes should not exceed $300,000.  The independent analysis and evaluation (to be carried out in the near future) will review the ABS and PFS methodologies related to representation, data reliability, data validity, and other aspects of data and method issues. Maximum cost of $2,900,000 is still within the original contract ceiling of $11,212,366.56.

15. Explanation of Program Changes or Adjustments

The NextGen NHTS will be conducted using two independent yet parallel surveys: the probability-based sample of households selected from an ABS frame (ABS study) and a survey of households selected from an online probability-based panel that originated from the same ABS frame (PFS study).

Data collected from the ABS study will serve as the official statistical information. Data and information gathered from the PFS study will be used to study the validity and feasibility of utilizing the PFS approach for future NHTS administrations.

The NextGen NHTS design has been modified from prior NHTS surveys with respect to (1) fewer questions asked, (2) smaller sample fielded, and (3) implementation of a biennial data collection cycle.

FHWA is sensitive to the potential impact a change in methodology could have on continuity and trend analysis in the long-standing NHTS program. The current research plan includes processes for addressing continuity through the survey design and weighting methodology and by means of analytical techniques to determine the impact of changes in survey methods.

16. Publication of Results of Data Collection

Congress requires USDOT to report the state and performance of the surface transportation system every 2 years in the Conditions and Performance Report. The NHTS is used in this report. The NHTS is also used extensively in the existing National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission with regards to forecasted travel demand by geographic and demographic groupings. In addition, the NHTS data have informed several policy and revenue areas through white papers on topics such as trends and forecasts in telecommuting, work and non-work travel, new immigrant travel, and older driver safety.

Other reports are compiled for USDOT, State and local agencies, and the transportation research community. These reports provide key indicators of travel demand across trip, person, household, and vehicle characteristics. In addition, bi-monthly briefs on current transportation policy issues are provided to USDOT and outside parties. All reports and documentation from the 2017 NHTS and previous surveys can be found at http://nhts.ornl.gov.

One of the primary documents for the NHTS data series is the Summary of Travel Trends (STT) report. This overview of the NHTS survey findings is published by FHWA and provides basic travel indicators for each of the survey years side-by-side with a short explanation of patterns and differences in the estimates. The report is widely used and cited often as the authoritative documentation of the survey findings.

The 2017 report includes a summary description of the survey protocols, a statement on the reliability and accuracy of the estimates, tables and figures with short narrative descriptions, and an appendix describing the changes in survey conduct over time.

The required final summary report for the NextGen NHTS is designed to update the 2017 STT using the results from the NextGen NHTS. The descriptive sections, including the profile of the survey, the protocols used in data collection, and the appendices identifying key changes over time, will be updated to include specific details of the NextGen NHTS.

The tabulation of the estimates from the NextGen NHTS will be constructed using the same or similar assumptions and exclusions as used for the earlier data to make the comparison to 2017 as stringent as possible. The final approved comments and conclusions will form the narrative portion of the report. As in the 2017 STT, the NextGen NHTS report will also display the 95% confidence interval for each data point. The contractor will compute the confidence interval, compare the results to the 2017 range of estimates, and identify areas where travel indicators have changed or remained statistically stable between 2017 and when the NextGen NHTS is conducted.

The final dataset and related metadata will be delivered to FHWA in SAS format. All tables and figures will be provided in Excel formats.

17. Approval for Not Displaying the Expiration Date of OMB Approval

Not applicable.

18. Exceptions to Certification Statement

None.

1https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_702.60.asp

2Pew Research Center. (2019). Internet/Broadband Fact Sheet, Washington, DC. Available online: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/.

3Dillman, D.A., Smyth, J.D., and Christian, L.M. (2014). Internet, Phone, Mail and Mixed-Mode Surveys: The Tailored Design Method, Fourth Edition. Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.

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