Traffic passes through a construction zone at University Boulevard and Arapahoe Road. Planners say understanding details about where these drivers are headed, where they stop along the way and when they do it will help them plan future road and transit improvements.

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

How you will be getting around the Front Range in the future is being shaped in part by a randomly chosen set of 12,000 households from Fort Collins to Pueblo in the first comprehensive Front Range Travel Counts survey.

Starting last summer in the Fort Collins area, the surveys are now in the process of being collected in the Denver metro area. Half of the households participating in the survey will come from Denver metro area.

The results will be statistically analyzed to help transportation planners understand the needs for highway and transit projects with better information on travel patterns. Individual replies are kept confidential, while the answers are aggregated into statistical results.

The participants are being solicited based on a random process from among all residential addresses. Are you a participant? If so, Inside Lane would like to hear from you about your experience. Email me at Kevin@inside-lane.com.

The information being gleaned is much more than “where did you go?” Here is a Frequently Asked Questions page about the survey.

Households that are chosen and agree to participate are given a travel diary in which they record not only when they go somewhere, but how, what route, what stops they make along the way, who they have with them, the activities they engaged in at their destinations – even if they stop along the way to go through a drive-through bank or fill up with gas.

Here is a brochure the households receive explaining their participation.

The information will help planners understand how people organize their trips, and that in turn will help them plan transportation projects that meet those needs.

Households will fill in a diary for a specified 24-hour period, running from 3 a.m. to 3 a.m.

The program is being led by the Denver Regional Council of Governments, Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments, North Front Range Metropolitan Planning Organization, Pueblo Area Council of Governments, Colorado Department of Transportation and Regional Transportation District.

The Denver area surveys are being done through June 1, and is about 40 percent complete, said Erik Sabina, regional modeling manager for DRCOG . Colorado Springs and Pueblo household surveys are just now getting underway. The North Front Range survey has been completed.

Here is DRCOG’s web site giving information about the survey.

The survey asks for non-travel information as well. Participants are asked about household income level, for instance, because planners say that the level of income is closely related to how people travel. Likewise, the number of people in a household also has a bearing on travel routines, as anyone who has to pick up their kids from school and get them to soccer practice or music lessons can tell you.

“We ask a number of questions about households and the people in them because we are not only trying to describe travel patterns but also understand why they occur,” reads a question-and-answer explainer from the survey sponsors. “By collecting household characteristics along with travel patterns, we are able to better understand why people travel the way they do and this also enables us to estimate future travel patterns as the population grows and changes.”

For more information about the household survey, please visit the official web site or call the survey hotline at 1-888-222-7734.