The U.S. Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive is a project to store, preserve, and make publicly available, via the internet, travel surveys conducted by metropolitan areas, states and localities.
As of 2007, the archive held 58 surveys comprising 2,718,329 trip records, 516,108 person records, 219,097 household records, 173,354 vehicle records, and 528,847 location records. Similar to this U.S. archive, an international archive of travel survey date has been suggested so that this service is expanded into more countries.
The motivation behind the archive is to forestall the loss of electronic files and documentation of surveys, which has befallen previous surveys. These surveys are both costly to conduct, and irreplaceable as it is impossible to reconstruct past records of human travel behavior. The archive was established with funding from the United States Department of Transportation.
Famous quotes containing the words metropolitan, travel, survey and/or archive:
“In metropolitan cases, the love of the most single-eyed lover, almost invariably, is nothing more than the ultimate settling of innumerable wandering glances upon some one specific object.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“I, who travel most often for my pleasure, do not direct myself so badly. If it looks ugly on the right, I take the left; if I find myself unfit to ride my horse, I stop.... Have I left something unseen behind me? I go back; it is still on my road. I trace no fixed line, either straight or crooked.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.”
—Isaac Watts (1674–1748)
“To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)