Chapter 12: Capturing Travel Behavior during Exceptional Events: Synthesis of a Workshop

Most travel data collection in the past has been targeted at identifying regular or routine travel. In urban travel surveys, cross-sectional data collection has dominated under the implicit assumption that travel behavior observed over a limited period of time is representative of travel behavior in general. However, exceptional events generate irregular travel that far exceeds regular travel in volume and importance. Without data of behavior during exceptional events, we will be unable to model and develop contingency plans to deal with them. Thus, the purpose of this workshop was to make the case for data collection of travel generated by exceptional events and to promote its implementation. We concentrated on data collection of person movement and omitted freight movement.