The National Household Travel Survey is the primary source of information about how people across the Nation travel. Since 1969 the survey was conducted every 5 to 7 years by the U.S. Department of Transportation. It is now conducted every two years.

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

Results of the survey are used to help understand how the Nation'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 NHTS, visit the Federal Highway Administration’s site about the National Household Travel Survey.

This survey is sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation. The FHWA supports state and local governments in designing, building, and maintaining the Nation's highway system (Federal Aid Highway Program) and various federally and tribal-owned lands (Federal Lands Highway Program).

Through financial and technical assistance to state and local governments, the FHWA is responsible for ensuring that our roads and highways continue to be among the safest and most technologically sound in the world. To learn more about the FHWA, visit  fhwa.dot.gov.

Transportation agencies in the states of Georgia, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Wisconsin are also sponsoring the study to obtain supplemental data for their state.

The National Household Travel Survey is funded by the United States Department of Transportation.

The Federal Highway Administration engaged WSP and Westat to carry out this survey. WSP USA is a professional services firm and a national leader in travel demand models including travel forecasting research, development, application, and interpretation. Westat is a leading survey research organization with over 60 years of experience. Westat has conducted national and regional transportation-related research for more than 25 years and has conducted the National Household Travel Survey in previous survey cycles.

To learn more about WSP and Westat, visit  wsp.com and 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 Nation's transportation system. Your household was selected at random to statistically represent thousands 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 7,500 households representing the country. The information that you provide can help build a more complete and accurate picture of local, regional, and statewide 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 vital.

Your household was randomly selected from a list of residential addresses. Selecting households in this way ensures that everyone in the Nation 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 phone, even if your telephone number is unlisted or 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.

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 invited to participate.

A federal agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, nor shall a person be subject to a penalty for failure to comply with a collection of information subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act unless that collection of information displays a currently valid OMB Control Number.  The OMB Control Number for this information collection is 2125-0545.  Public reporting for this collection of information is estimated to be approximately 5 minutes to respond to the initial request to participate. Providing travel information will require about 20 minutes per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering, and maintaining the data needed, completing, and reviewing the collection of information. 

All responses to this collection of information are voluntary. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden to: Information Collection Clearance Officer, Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, 1200 New Jersey Ave SE, Washington, D.C. 20590.

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, use the DailyTravel app or call us to complete it on the phone.

Online:  click here and enter your PIN number. Your PIN number is printed on the letter we sent to your household. 

By phone: call 1-888-907-6487 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 went on an assigned day. Place reporting for the assigned day can be done through the DailyTravel app, the web, or over the phone. 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 travel information. An additional $10 per person (ages 13+) will be included for everyone in the household that uses the DailyTravel app.

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 the assigned day. Please do not be tempted to report more or less 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.

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 to 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 record your trips, as we would still like to know that. Please do not report more or less trips than you actually made on your travel day or decline 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, 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 households who are 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. We can assure you that your privacy will be respected. Any information you provide will be kept confidential as required by law. 

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 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 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.

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

FHWA 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 https://nhts.ornl.gov/assets/2022/pub/2022_NHTS_Summary_Travel_Trends.pdf; https://nhts.ornl.gov/compendium to see how data from the last NHTS survey was used.

• We use a number of safeguards to ensure that survey data is 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 US. 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. To see how data from past surveys is used visit https://nhts.ornl.gov/publications.

The USDOT and other agencies use this information in a number of reports that are available to the public. For example, the FHWA report “Summary of Travel Trends: 2022 National Household Travel Survey” can be viewed at https://nhts.ornl.gov/assets/2022/pub/2022_NHTS_Summary_Travel_Trends.pdf; other reports are available at https://nhts.ornl.gov/publications. Your individual information will not be publicly available.

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 Nation. 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 amounts of emissions. Improving air quality by reducing vehicle emissions is an important part of transportation planning and learning about your walking, biking, driving, and public transit use helps planners to reduce carbon emissions by improving the infrastructure to support non-motorized trips.