Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive

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. 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.{{cite book|first1=David| last1=Levinson| first2=Ewa| last2=Zofka| editor1-last=Stopher| editor1-first=Peter| editor2-last=Stecher| editor2-first=Cheryl| title=Travel Survey Methods|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qJsdL_TtH2YC| format=Google books| access-date=May 1, 2009| year=2006| publisher=Elsevier and Emerald Group Publishing| isbn=978-0-08-044662-2| pages=223–238| chapter=The Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive: A Case Study in Archiving| chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qJsdL_TtH2YC&pg=PR17| quote=A related solution for archiving problems would be to create an International Travel Survey Archive (ITSA)}}

The motivation behind the archive is to forestall the loss of electronic files and documentation of surveys, which has befallen previous surveys.{{cite journal

|last=Levinson

|first=David

|date=Summer 2007

|title=Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive

|journal=TMIP Connection: The Traffic Model Improvement Program Newsletter

|version=FHWA-HEP-07-032

|page=6

|publisher=Texas Transportation Institute and United States Department of Transportation

|location=College Station, Texas

|url=http://tmip.fhwa.dot.gov/resources/clearinghouse/docs/tmip/newsletter/summer07_issue27/summer07_issue27.pdf

|access-date=May 1, 2009

|url-status=dead

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090416135416/http://tmip.fhwa.dot.gov/resources/clearinghouse/docs/tmip/newsletter/summer07_issue27/summer07_issue27.pdf

|archive-date=April 16, 2009

}} Archived from the [https://web.archive.org/web/20090416135416/http://tmip.fhwa.dot.gov/resources/clearinghouse/docs/tmip/newsletter/summer07_issue27/summer07_issue27.pdf 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." These surveys are both costly to conduct, and irreplaceable as it is impossible to reconstruct past records of human travel behavior.[http://rational.ce.umn.edu/MTSA_article.pdf Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive Available as Off-Site Archive in Urban Transportation Monitor Volume 19, No. 20, pp.1,9 Nov. 11, 2005] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081223173327/http://rational.ce.umn.edu/MTSA_article.pdf |date=2008-12-23 }} The archive was established with funding from the United States Department of Transportation.{{cite web|title=Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive |url=http://tmip.fhwa.dot.gov/resources/clearinghouse/343 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090502215641/http://tmip.fhwa.dot.gov/resources/clearinghouse/343 |publisher=United States Department of Transportation |location=Washington, DC |archive-date=May 2, 2009 |access-date=May 1, 2009 |quote=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. |url-status=dead }}