Applying GPS Data to Understand Travel Behavior, Volume II: Guidelines (2014)

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N A T I O N A L C O O P E R A T I V E H I G H W A Y R E S E A R C H P R O G R A M NCHRP REPORT 775 Applying GPS Data to Understand Travel Behavior Volume II: Guidelines Jean Wolf Westat | Geostats services Atlanta, GA William Bachman Westat | Geostats services Atlanta, GA Marcelo Oliveira Westat | Geostats services Atlanta, GA Joshua Auld University of illinois, chicaGo Chicago, IL Abolfazl (Kouros) Mohammadian University of illinois, chicaGo Chicago, IL Peter Vovsha Parsons Brinckerhoff, inc. New York, NY Johanna Zmud ranD corPoration Washington, D.C. Subscriber Categories Highways  •  Data and Information Technology  •  Planning and Forecasting TRANSPORTAT ION RESEARCH BOARD WASHINGTON, D.C. 2014 www.TRB.org  Research sponsored by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration

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C O O P E R A T I V E R E S E A R C H P R O G R A M S CRP STAFF FOR NCHRP REPORT 775 Christopher W. Jenks, Director, Cooperative Research Programs Christopher Hedges, Manager, National Cooperative Highway Research Program Nanda Srinivasan, Senior Program Officer Charlotte Thomas, Senior Program Assistant Eileen P. Delaney, Director of Publications Doug English, Editor NCHRP PROJECT 8-89 PANEL Field of Transportation Planning—Area of Forecasting Rebekah Anderson, Ohio DOT, Columbus, OH (Chair) Raj Bridgelall, Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute, Fargo, ND Ju-Yin Chen, Virginia DOT, Richmond, VA Christopher M. Puchalsky, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, Philadelphia, PA Richard Roisman, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, Washington, DC Elizabeth Sall, San Francisco County Transportation Authority, San Francisco, CA Morteza Tadayon, Maryland DOT, Baltimore, MD Kermit Wies, Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, Chicago, IL Shuming Yan, Washington State DOT, Seattle, WA Elaine R. Murakami, FHWA Liaison Kimberly Fisher, TRB Liaison

1 Introduction 3 The Roles of GPS Data in Travel Behavior Research and Modeling 4 Household Travel Surveys 5 Modeling Support 6 Activity and Trip End Locations 6 Baseline Model Speeds 7 Other Research or Application Areas 8 Sources of GPS Data 10 GPS Data from Surveys 11 GPS Hardware 11 Guidelines for Identifying GPS Hardware Needs 13 GPS Data Logging Attributes 13 Data Accuracy 13 GPS Recording Interval 13 GPS Device Configuration and Download Software 14 Importing and Processing GPS Data 14 Contents of HTS GPS Data Files 14 Costs of GPS-Based Household Travel Survey Data Sets 16 Third-Party Travel Data 17 Link-Based Data Products 18 GPS Point-Based Data Products 19 Cell Phone Data Products 20 Contents of GPS Data Files from Private Firms 20 Contents of Aggregate Data Files 20 Contents of Disaggregated Data Files 21 Costs of GPS Data Sets Obtained from Private Firms 23 Assessing GPS Data Quality 23 Quality Indicators for GPS Point Data 23 Measures of Spatial Accuracy 25 Coverage 25 Measurement Error and Biases 27 Cleaning Raw GPS Data 29 Processing GPS Data 30 Prerequisites for Successful GPS Processing 30 Fusing GPS Data with Other Databases 31 Inferring Travel Attributes 31 Identifying Trip End Locations and Types C O N T E N T S

32 Identifying Mode Transitions 33 Identifying Travel Mode 33 Identifying Trip Purpose 34 Identifying Other Travel Attributes 35 Inferring Tours and Activity-Travel Patterns 35 Data Requirements for Tour Identification 36 Tour Identification Process 38 Guidelines for Deriving Activity-Travel Pattern Characteristics from GPS Traces 38 Inferring Demographics 39 Demographic Estimation Model Development Process 41 Demographic Characterization Model Usage 41 Limitations of the Demographic Characterization Process 42 Map Matching 44 Privacy Considerations 44 Overview of Private Information 44 GPS Data Collected in Surveys 45 GPS Data Collected (or Crowd-Sourced) from Consumers 47 References Note: Many of the photographs, figures, and tables in this report have been converted from color to grayscale for printing. The electronic version of the report (posted on the Web at www.trb.org) retains the color versions.