Project number: MT-15-15

Funding source: Caltrans

Contract number: 65A0533

Funding amount: $99,945

Performance period: 8/15/2015 to 12/31/2016

Link to full seminar video: https://youtu.be/968w_uoHWew

Project description

Residential mobility rates in the United States (US) have historically been among the highest in the world (Molloy et al, 2011); however, these rates have been in steady decline for the last two decades. While most planning models have ignored migration flows, and instead, focused on the characteristics of the population as drivers of travel demand, there are suggestions from other literatures that recent migrant may have different travel behavior than settled residents. This study is the first to explicitly model this relationship by merging data from the American Community Survey and the National Transit Database. The results also demonstrate that recent immigrant migrants to a metropolitan area are less likely to use transit if they arrived from another metropolitan area than those that have arrived directly from a foreign country.

Research seminar highlights video