The Atlanta Regional Travel Survey is an important source of information about how people across the 21-county Atlanta planning region travel. This survey is usually conducted about every 10 years and was last conducted in 2011.

Included in the survey are questions about the members of your household, your travel thoughts about transportation in general, and the places you and your household members go on an assigned travel day.

Results of the survey are used to help understand how the region’s transportation systems are working, including roads, highways, bike paths, and public transportation. Data from the survey build a snapshot of how, when, and why we travel in our daily lives. This information helps policymakers and transportation planners now and in the future.

To learn more about the Atlanta Regional Survey, visit  ARC site survey page.

This survey is sponsored by the Atlanta Regional Commission with support from the Georgia Department of Transportation. ARC supports regional and local governments in areas of transportation planning, mobility services, aging services and resources, climate change and resilience, community development, homeland security and emergency preparedness, housing, leadership development, natural resources, research and innovation, and workforce solutions.

The Atlanta Regional Travel Survey is funded by the United States Department of Transportation through ARC’s Metropolitan Transportation Plan, which sets the vision for metro Atlanta's transportation needs through 2050 and the short-range Transportation Improvement Program, which allocates federal funds for the highest-priority projects in the region.

The Atlanta Regional Commission engaged Westat to carry out this survey. Westat is a leading survey research organization, which was founded in 1963. Westat has conducted national, state-wide and regional transportation-related research for more than 25 years.

To learn more about Westat, visit  Westat.com.

Your travel experiences are unique and important. No matter how you go from place to place, or even if you don't travel much at all, you have an opportunity to provide input that can help define the future of our region's transportation system. Your household was selected at random to statistically represent hundreds of others like yours, so your participation is essential in helping us build a complete picture of the transportation needs in your community.

You have an opportunity to help your community. By participating, your household will be one of only 8,000 households representing the 21-county ARC planning region. The information that you provide can help build a more complete and accurate picture of local and regional transportation needs. Regardless of the number of trips you make and whether you travel by car, bus, bicycle, or other means or do not travel at all, your input is critical to the success of the survey.

Your household was randomly selected from a list of residential addresses. Selecting households in this way ensures that everyone in the survey area has the same chance of being chosen, but it also means that we cannot replace your household with another one. All selected households are first contacted by mail, and some may also be contacted by cell phone, even if your phone number is on a DoNotCall list. This is because Westat is a survey research organization, not a telemarketer, and scientific surveys are exempt from DoNotCall lists. Westat does not sell any goods or services and only conducts scientific surveys.

A household consists of all the people who live together in one residence and share a kitchen. Because this is a household survey, people who live in group quarters such as dormitories, prisons, or assisted living facilities are not being asked to participate.

Follow these steps:

1. First, fill out a brief survey online using the PIN from the letter you received by mail.
2. Next, we will ask you to tell us about your travel on an assigned date. You can do this online, download and use the DailyTravel app or call us to complete the survey over the phone.

Online: Enter your PIN number in the Take the Survey section above. Your PIN number is printed on the letter we sent to your household.

By phone: call 1-888-600-1405 to speak with a survey team member.

If you don't know your PIN number or have any questions about the survey, please Contact Us.

Everyone's experience is a bit different, so the time needed to take the survey will vary. The number of people in your household, the number of trips made, and other factors determine the actual length of the survey. To get started, participants are asked to complete a brief 5-minute survey about their household. Then, they will be asked to tell us about the places their household traveled to on their assigned day. Reporting travel for the assigned day can be conducted through the DailyTravel app, the web, or over the phone – whichever is most convenient for you and your household members. This step takes about 20 minutes per household member.

As a thank you, your household will be sent $10 per person once everyone in your household provides their travel information. An additional $10 per person (ages 13+) will be included for everyone in the household that uses the DailyTravel app to report their travel.

Each person's travel is influenced by things like the age, sex, income and employment of all household members. Collecting this information helps us understand what makes each household's travel unique.

On any given day, many households may have a “non-ordinary” travel day. But collectively, all these variations—less travel, more travel, and different-than-usual travel—balance out. So even if your assigned travel day is out-of-the-ordinary for you or someone else in your household, it is very important that you report what actually occurred on your assigned travel day. Please do not be tempted to report more or fewer trips than you actually made on the travel day. The reason we assign a specific travel day is to get a complete picture of transportation needs among all surveyed households.

Continue to record your travel experiences in your travel logs even if you will be out of town on your assigned travel day.

That’s fine! Even if you typically travel very little, or not at all, we still need to hear from you! Some people feel that just because all they do is visit a friend or go to the post office, their information is not important. In fact, these people, and those who do not go anywhere at all on their travel day, are just as important as someone who makes many trips. If we include only people that go many places in the survey, we would over-represent daily travel. The purpose of the survey is to get a complete and accurate picture of travel in the country. So even if you did not go anywhere on the day, we still need to know that. Please do not report more or fewer trips than you actually made on your travel day or please do not decline to participate in the survey because you do not travel a lot.

That’s fine! We are interested in all the ways you get around, whether you drive a vehicle, or whether you walk, use the bus, take the train, ride a bicycle, use a scooter or use ride-hailing services such as taxi, Uber or Lyft. Even if you are homebound, we still want to make sure your household is included in the survey as you will be representing other households who are also homebound. Everyone's input is equally important, and we want to get a snapshot of all travel activity by all types of households.

Yes! The survey is voluntary and you do not have to answer any questions you don't want to. However, it is important to the success of the survey that everyone chosen takes part in its entirety. We can assure you that your privacy will be respected. Any information you provide will be kept confidential as required by law, which is important to Westat as a respected and well-known research company.

A significant amount of travel is made by children going to and from school. Often, this affects the travel behavior of their parents or caretakers, not only as it relates to school trips, but how they plan other trips like grocery shopping and running errands. Knowing when and where children go to school and how they get there help researchers, planners, and travel demand modelers better understand household trip-making behavior. Getting children to and from school safely is a priority in all transportation planning.

No identifying information about you or your children is ever made available to the public.

One of the primary reasons for travel is to go to and from work. A significant amount of travel is also made by people at work. Knowing respondents’ occupations and work locations helps researchers, planners, and modelers better understand how jobs generate travel, where they occur and when those trips are made.

Information about your occupation and work location is used for transportation planning purposes only.

The Atlanta Regional Commission is committed to respecting your privacy. By law, any information you provide will be kept confidential. The information collected is used for research purposes only. Please visit 2011 ARC Household Travel Survey to see how data from the last travel survey were used.

• We use a number of safeguards to ensure that survey data are protected from accidental disclosure.
• Your name and other identifying information will not be published. Data from the survey will only be used by transportation researchers.
• Your information is combined with information from other participants and used for statistical purposes by transportation planners and policymakers.

The data collected from this survey will be statistically summarized to describe the travel behaviors of all households in the 21-county Atlanta region. For example, information provided by all participants will be used to summarize the general activities people engage in, the means of travel used to get to these activities, where people are coming from and going to, the extent to which trips are combined together (e.g., grouping together your errands), and the time-of-day trips are made. For more information about how the data will be protected, review the Privacy Statement.

ARC uses the survey data for a number of reports that are available to the public. For example, the previous survey report can be viewed here: 2011 ARC Household Travel Survey Final Report. As you can see in the final report, your individual information will not be publicly available and are only combined with all other households who participated in the survey.

Yes. Improving air quality by reducing vehicle emissions is an important part of transportation planning and decision making. Learning about the vehicle you use, your walking, biking, driving, and public transit use can help planners understand the impact of travel on air quality and plan for policy and infrastructure improvements that would support more non-motorized trips to reduce carbon emissions.

The survey information can be used to help improve the quality and availability of transportation options throughout the 21-county Atlanta region. For instance, understanding how and where services are delivered to our homes—whether online or in-person—and how this differs by location can enhance policy development in both urban and rural areas. Additionally, observing and analyzing changes in commuting patterns since the pandemic can assist transportation planners in exploring better commute options.

The information is also used by air quality agencies to better understand how vehicles contribute to the types and amount of emissions. Improving air quality by reducing vehicle emissions is an important part of transportation planning and learning about your walking, biking, driving, public transit, scooter, shared ride use helps planners to reduce carbon emissions by improving the infrastructure to support non-motorized trips.