**Apologies for cross-postings!**

In Fall 2011, TRB formed the Task Force on New Directions for the National Household Travel Survey (ABJ45T). The main focus of the task force is to reach out to the transportation community re: the use of NHTS and potential impacts of the redesign of the survey and to serve as a bridge between USDOT and the NHTS data user community. Task force members represent users from a variety of perspectives (see http://goo.gl/Ll3dC for a list of members).

If you are interested in participating in an in-person NHTS user discussion, we invite you to join us at one of our upcoming user forums:

*Innovations in Travel Modeling, Monday April 30 from 8 to 10:15 am (See “NHTS Data User’s Forum” on the conference program)

*NATMEC, Wednesday June 6 from 10:30 to noon in the Continental Room.

*Tools of the Trade, Wednesday Sept 12 (as part of the Wednesday morning data workshop)

You can also subscribe to the NHTS-USER list serve, following the instructions at the bottom of this email. The list serve is intended for periodic discussions of issues relevant to the NHTS design and will serve as the “friend’s list” for the task force. Technical questions should continue to be directed to the FHWA Community of Practice. We promise not to spam you, but will provide quarterly updates on NHTS program activities, such as this most recent update:

March 2012, FHWA UPDATE: In February, the final 2009 Trip Chain file was posted on the website. Also posted was the NHTS Visualization Tool containing the Data Extraction Tool (DET), Choropleth Mapping with pie bubble charts and the Dashboard Design providing synchronized display of maps, table and charts on selected travel trend data statistics and geography. In early March, the 2010 Status of the Nation’s Highways, Bridges and Transit: Conditions and Performance Report to Congress was released. The report furnishes Congress with an objective appraisal of the physical conditions, operational performance and financial status of the transportation surface system. The NHTS program was responsible for Chapter 1. Finally, the NHTS co-hosted a webinar that featured the Long Distance Exploratory Research proposed design.

If you are a user of NHTS (past, present, or future), please feel free to join in the discussion!

Stacey Bricka

Chair, ABJ45T

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NHTS-USER Listserve Subscription Instructions:

You can join the list by sending an email to listserv@listserv.tamu.edu and in the BODY put

SUBSCRIBE nhts-user firstname lastname

(for example: “SUBSCRIBE nhts-user stacey bricka”)

**You will receive an email requesting confirmation – please watch for that email and respond promptly, as you have a limited time window in which to confirm.

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