As our industry changes focus from traditional modeling focused on motor vehicles and transit to planning for multi-modal mobility and improving quality of life we have a need to develop more realistic predictions of walking and bicycle trips. This is particularly important when decision-makers are asking travel forecasters and planners to quantify not only the amount of bicycle and pedestrian trips that will use a particular facility if built, but also the overall benefits to the local transportation system. While the need for fine-grained travel networks and understanding the importance of the link between transportation and land use on pedestrian and bicycle demand has been well documented this presentation will document the solutions to two remaining difficulties: under-representation of bicycle and pedestrian travel in traditional travel surveys and the variability of non-motorized trip rates by land form.

The presentation will describe the changes that the Delaware Department of Transportation made to its annual travel survey in order to better capture non-motorized trips and present the results of the past few years of data and the significant change in mode-share that the survey produced. It will also present the use of the refined survey in modifying the DelDOT Statewide Model to an accessibility-based travel demand model that accounts for the presence of multi-modal infrastructure and land form in determining trips by mode.