06.23.2023
TR News spotlights RSG’s innovative work using big data to forecast recreational travel demand
A recent article published in TR News, titled “Peaks and Valleys: Forecasting Recreational Travel Demand,” highlighted the RSG team's innovative work on National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Project 08-132: Accessing America’s Great Outdoors: Forecasting Recreational Travel Demand.
Our team leveraged our significant expertise in travel model development, mobility data analytics, and public lands planning to deliver results. This first-of-its-kind project leveraged passively collected data (“big data”) from location-based services (LBS) on smartphones and other devices, along with other datasets, to build models predicting recreational travel to America's public lands. Merging big data with other key datasets provided a better understanding of visitor travel patterns and the potential impacts on adjacent transportation infrastructure. Importantly, this research advanced the industry's understanding of how big data can support successful transportation planning activities in and around parkland areas.
Work on NCHRP 08-132 is now complete and the final deliverables include a model, which will be shared online in an open-source tool, and an accompanying user guidebook.