[Federal Register Volume 89, Number 86 (Thursday, May 2, 2024)]
[Notices]
[Pages 35922-35924]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2024-09516]


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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

Federal Highway Administration

[Docket No. FHWA-2024-0031]


Agency Information Collection Activities: Notice of Request for 
Revision of a Currently Approved Information Collection

AGENCY: Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), DOT.

ACTION: Notice of request for revision of a currently approved 
information collection.

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SUMMARY: The FHWA has forwarded the information collection request 
described in this notice to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 
for a renewal of an existing information collection. We are required to 
publish this notice in the Federal Register by the Paperwork Reduction 
Act of 1995.

DATES: Please submit comments by June 3, 2024.

ADDRESSES: You may submit comments identified by DOT Docket ID Number 
0031 by any of the following methods:
    Website: For access to the docket to read background documents or 
comments received go to the Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to http://www.regulations.gov.
    Follow the online instructions for submitting comments.
    Fax: 1-202-493-2251.
    Mail: Docket Management Facility, U.S. Department of 
Transportation, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New 
Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001.
    Hand Delivery or Courier: U.S. Department of Transportation, West 
Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, 
Washington, DC 20590, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET, Monday through 
Friday, except Federal holidays.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Daniel Jenkins, 202-366-1067, 
[email protected], National Travel Behavior Data Program Manager, 
Federal Highway Administration, Office of Policy, 1200 New Jersey 
Avenue SE, Room E83-414, Washington, DC 20590, Monday through Friday, 
except Federal holidays.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: We published a Federal Register Notice with 
a 60-day public comment period on this information collection on 
December 14, 2023, at [88 FR 86719]. The comments and FHWA's responses 
to the 60-day notice are below:

Comment 1

    I admire embracing the internet as a survey tool. Too often the 
decrease in landline usage has been seen as the harbinger of the 
survey's death. Taking advantage of changing technology, not only the 
internet but also smartphones, points to intelligent survey design and 
strategy. Also, the estimated total number of burden hours makes sense 
and parallels the importance of these survey results in evaluating 
transit in the United States. I would be curious to learn if the 
initial offer of 2 dollars is enough to garner the interest of most 
survey takers, and how much total money is earmarked for compensating 
survey takers. I agree that 2 dollars is a better incentive than 
nothing, but I fear the number might not be enticing enough for most 
survey takers. Of

[[Page 35923]]

course, the total compensation for completing the survey is 20 dollars, 
so perhaps that might be enough incentive even if the initial offering 
appears minute. I am also curious as to what determines the frequency 
of these surveys and perhaps the final proposal could briefly explain 
the history of past surveys and how the USDOT determines when another 
survey is due. In any case, I think the survey as proposed holds 
tremendous importance for federal and state agencies, especially in the 
face of climate change. Climate change is already impacting how 
Americans move, from the buying of electric cars to the shunning of a 
walk outside because the heat is too intense, and gaining knowledge 
about these changing trends could help us embrace a greener future.

DOT Response

    Incentives: The amount to offer as an initial incentive was tested 
as part of the 2022 NHTS pilot. In that test, the initial amount varied 
between $2 and $5. The difference in participation levels between the 
two groups was 1.7%, suggesting that the $2 incentive was strong enough 
to elicit participation from the general public.
    Title: 2024 Next Generation National Household Travel Survey 
(NextGen NHTS).
    OMB Control: 2125-0545.
    Background: Title 23, United States Code, Section 502 authorizes 
the USDOT to carry out advanced research and transportation research to 
measure the performance of the surface transportation systems in the 
US, including the efficiency, energy use, air quality, congestion, and 
safety of the highway and intermodal transportation systems. The USDOT 
is charged with the overall responsibility to obtain current 
information on national patterns of travel, which establishes a data 
base to better understand travel behavior, evaluate the use of 
transportation facilities, and gauge the impact of the USDOT's policies 
and programs.
    The NHTS is the USDOT's authoritative nationally representative 
data source for daily passenger travel. This inventory of travel 
behavior reflects travel mode (e.g., private vehicles, public 
transportation, walk and bike) and trip purpose (e.g., travel to work, 
school, recreation, personal/family trips) by U.S. household residents. 
Survey results are used by federal and state agencies to monitor the 
performance and adequacy of current facilities and infrastructure, and 
to plan for future needs.
    The collection and analysis of national transportation data has 
been of critical importance for more than half a century. Previous 
surveys were conducted in 1969, 1977, 1983, 1990, 1995, 2001, 2009, 
2017 and 2022. The current survey will be the tenth in this series, and 
allow researchers, planners, and officials at the state and federal 
levels to monitor travel trends.
    Data from the NHTS are widely used to support research needs within 
the USDOT, and State and local agencies, in addition to responding to 
queries from Congress, the research community and the media on 
important issues. Current and recent topics of interest include:
     Travel to work patterns by transportation mode for 
infrastructure improvements and congestion reduction,
     Access to public transit, paratransit, and rail services 
by various demographic groups,
     Measures of travel by mode to establish exposure rates for 
risk analyses,
     Support for Federal, State, and local planning activities 
and policy evaluation,
     Active transportation by walk and bike to establish the 
relationship to public health issues,
     Vehicle usage for energy consumption analysis,
     Traffic behavior of specific demographic groups such as 
Millennials, Gen Z, and the aging population.
    Within the USDOT, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) holds 
responsibility for technical and funding coordination. The National 
Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Federal Transit 
Administration (FTA), and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) 
are also primary data users and have historically participated in 
project planning and financial support.

Proposed Data Acquisition Methodology

    NHTS data are collected from a stratified random sample of 
households that represent a broad range of geographic and demographic 
characteristics. Letters and postcards are sent to selected households 
requesting some basic demographic and contact information and inviting 
them to participate in the diary survey. The recruitment survey is 
completed on the study website.
    Households who complete the recruitment survey are subsequently 
invited to complete a diary survey. All household members aged 5 and 
older are eligible. The household is assigned to record their travel on 
a specific day and asked to note every trip taken during a 24-hour 
period. Based upon their preferences, the travel information is then 
reported through a survey website, a smartphone app., or through a 
telephone interview.
    Reminders are sent periodically to households who do not respond 
within the expected timeframe. Monetary incentives are provided in 
increasing amounts for all households that complete the survey.
    The survey will collect data during an entire 12-month period so 
that all 365 days of the year including weekends and holidays are 
accounted for. A total of 7,500 households will comprise the national 
sample for the 2024 survey.
    Issues Related to Sampling. The sampling design reflects the U.S. 
household trends of decreasing landline telephone ownership and 
increasing access to the internet. The 2024 NextGen NHTS will leverage 
this shift in technology, in particular the move away from home 
telephone usage, to structure a research design that uses mail, web, 
smartphone app. and telephone data collection modes. The methodological 
approach starts with a national address-based sample (ABS).
    The survey sample will be drawn from the ABS frame maintained by 
Marketing Systems Group (MSG). It originates from the U.S. Postal 
Service (USPS) Computerized Delivery Sequence file (CDS) and is updated 
on a monthly basis. MSG also provides the ability to match some 
auxiliary variables (e.g., race/ethnicity, education, household income) 
to a set of sampled addresses. MSG geocodes their entire ABS frame, so 
block-, block group-, and tract-level characteristics from the 
Decennial Census and the American Community Survey (ACS) may be 
appended to addresses and used for sampling and/or data collection 
purposes.
    Sample Size. Completed surveys will be obtained from a nationally 
representative sample of 7,500 households. Assuming response rates of 
26 percent for the recruitment stage, 60 percent at the diary stage, 
and a residency rate of 92 percent for sampled addresses, a total of 
52,258 sampled addresses will be required to attain the targeted 7,500 
responding households.
    Stratification. The sample will be stratified by Census Division 
and urban/rural classification (18 strata total). The target sample 
size (of responding households) will then be initially allocated among 
the strata according to the proportion of addresses falling in the 
stratum determined by the counts of addresses from the American 
Community Survey (ACS).
    With the ABS approach, identifying targeted areas that correspond 
to those

[[Page 35924]]

for which estimates can be developed from the NHTS data are 
straightforward. Geocoding and GIS processing can be used to link 
addresses to states and counties in a highly reliable fashion. There 
can be some ambiguity for addresses that are P.O. boxes or are listed 
as rural route addresses. These can be handled in a routine manner with 
a set of well-defined rules as such addresses will represent only a 
small proportion of the population. Thus, no important issues arise in 
the definition of areas with an ABS sample design that relies on mail 
for initial contact, as is the case with the proposed approach.
    Assignments for recording travel data by sampled households will be 
equally distributed across all days to ensure a balanced day-of-week 
distribution. The sample (of recruitment letters to households) will be 
released periodically through a process that will control the balance 
of travel days by month.

Data Collection Methods

    An updated approach to enhancing survey response has been 
developed. This includes providing progressive monetary incentives and 
using a mail with push-to-web recruitment survey that is just 5 minutes 
in length. Upon completing the recruitment survey, household members 
aged 5 and older are offered the opportunity to provide their travel on 
an assigned travel day via a smartphone app. or web using a unique 
personal identification number (PIN) or telephone interview.

Information Proposed for Collection

    Recruitment. The survey will begin with mailing the sampled 
households an initial invitation letter followed by postcard and letter 
reminders. The letter will contain a $2 cash incentive per household 
and promised incentives (up to $20 per person) to encourage diary 
completion. Participants will complete the recruitment survey on the 
web. The survey is designed to collect key household information (e.g., 
enumeration of household members), basic demographic characteristics 
(e.g., age, gender, etc.), and personal contact information (e.g., 
email address and telephone number). To support recruitment, the study 
will provide a toll-free number on survey materials. The study website 
will provide responses to likely questions and will serve as the portal 
to the survey.
    Diary Retrieval. The travel day diary data will be collected from 
respondents either from self-reporting via the web or a smartphone 
app., or from professionally trained interviewers using a computer-
assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) system. The questionnaire and 
back-end systems allow for sophisticated branching and skip patterns to 
enhance data retrieval by asking only those questions that are 
necessary and appropriate for the individual participant. Look-up 
tables are included at the back end to assist with information such as 
vehicle makes and models. Google API is used to assist in identifying 
specific place names and locations. The location data for the 
participant's home, workplace, or school are stored and automatically 
inserted in the dataset for trips after the first report. Household 
rostering is a list of all vehicles and persons in the household that 
allows a trip to be reported from one household member and can include 
another household member who travel together to be inserted into the 
record for the second person. This automatic insert of information 
reduces the burden of the second respondent to be queried about a trip 
already reported by the initial respondent.
    Data range, consistency and edit checks are automatically 
programmed to reduce reporting errors, survey length, and maintain the 
flow of information processing. Data cross checks also help reduce the 
burden by ensuring that the reporting is consistent within each trip.
    The study website and web instrument will be reviewed for Section 
508 compliance using the rules specified in sections 1194.22--`Web-
based intranet and internet information and applications' and 1194.23--
`Telecommunications products.' All materials will be available in both 
English and Spanish language forms. Spanish translations will be 
developed using industry standards and will apply reverse- translation 
protocols.
    Respondents: A stratified random sample of 7,500 households across 
the 50 states and the District of Columbia will be included in the 
survey. Household will include an average of 2.5 members for a total of 
18,750 individual respondents 5 years and older to the diary survey.
    Frequency: This is a periodic study last conducted in 2022.
    Estimated Average Burden per Response: It will take approximately 5 
minutes per household member to complete the recruitment survey, and 20 
minutes per eligible household member to complete the diary survey.
    Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours: It is estimated that a total 
of 29,375 persons will complete the survey. This includes 5,000 persons 
in households who completed just the recruitment survey and did not 
participate in the diary survey and 16,125 persons who completed both 
the recruitment and diary surveys. This results in approximately 6,417 
hours of support for this data collection effort assuming an average of 
5 minutes per household for the recruitment, and 20 minutes per 
household member (aged 5 and older) for the diary survey.
    Public Comments Invited: You are asked to comment on any aspect of 
this information collection, including: (1) Whether the proposed 
collection is necessary for the FHWA's performance; (2) the accuracy of 
the estimated burdens; (3) ways for the FHWA to enhance the quality, 
usefulness, and clarity of the collected information; and (4) ways that 
the burden could be minimized, including the use of electronic 
technology, without reducing the quality of the collected information. 
The agency will summarize and/or include your comments in the request 
for OMB's clearance of this information collection.
    Authority: The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995; 44 U.S.C. chapter 
35, as amended; and 49 CFR 1.48.

     Issued on: April 27, 2024.
Jazmyne Lewis,
Information Collection Officer.
[FR Doc. 2024-09516 Filed 5-1-24; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4910-22-P