The U.S. Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive is a project to store, preserve, and make publicly available, via the internet, travel surveys conducted by metropolitan areas, states and localities.

As of 2007, the archive held 58 surveys comprising 2,718,329 trip records, 516,108 person records, 219,097 household records, 173,354 vehicle records, and 528,847 location records.[1] Similar to this U.S. archive, an international archive of travel survey date has been suggested so that this service is expanded into more countries.[2]

The motivation behind the archive is to forestall the loss of electronic files and documentation of surveys, which has befallen previous surveys.[1] These surveys are both costly to conduct, and irreplaceable as it is impossible to reconstruct past records of human travel behavior.[3] The archive was established with funding from the United States Department of Transportation.[4]

References

  1. ^ a b Levinson, David (Summer 2007). "Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive" (PDF). TMIP Connection: The Traffic Model Improvement Program Newsletter. FHWA-HEP-07-032. College Station, Texas: Texas Transportation Institute and United States Department of Transportation: 6. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 16, 2009. Retrieved May 1, 2009. Archived from the original on May 1, 2009. "Properly archiving the travel surveys at a central location (with remote backups) safeguards the data against loss to calamities such as fires, earthquakes, floods, and terrorist attacks that have befallen earlier surveys."
  2. ^ Levinson, David; Zofka, Ewa (2006). "The Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive: A Case Study in Archiving". In Stopher, Peter; Stecher, Cheryl (eds.). Travel Survey Methods (Google books). Elsevier and Emerald Group Publishing. pp. 223–238. ISBN 978-0-08-044662-2. Retrieved May 1, 2009. A related solution for archiving problems would be to create an International Travel Survey Archive (ITSA)
  3. ^ Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive Available as Off-Site Archive in Urban Transportation Monitor Volume 19, No. 20, pp.1,9 Nov. 11, 2005 Archived 2008-12-23 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ "Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive". Washington, DC: United States Department of Transportation. Archived from the original on May 2, 2009. Retrieved May 1, 2009. The United States Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics has funded a project at the University of Minnesota to develop a Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive to store, preserve, and make publicly available, via the internet, travel surveys conducted by metropolitan areas, states and localities.

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