A process for trip purpose imputation from Global Positioning System data

Global Positioning System (GPS) devices have been applied in travel data collection for much of the past decade to improve data quality. These devices can record positions, time, and travel speed. However, trip purposes currently cannot be recorded automatically by the devices, therefore, the accuracy of purpose imputation becomes important to improve the quality of travel survey data. This paper proposes an improved process which introduces some additional information (e.g., activity duration, tour information) for trip purpose imputation. An application of this approach is reported in this paper based on a Global Positioning System survey in the Greater Cincinnati region to show the improvement in the accuracy of trip purpose detection over more conventional methods.