Small area estimation of vehicle ownership and use

A national model of vehicle ownership and use is developed for the USA. Decisions about the number of cars owned by households and the annual miles traveled are jointly modeled using a discrete–continuous probit model, which has been estimated on the 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) data. The model system covers four Census Regions (Northeast, Midwest, South and West) and three area types (urbanized area, urban clusters and rural). Models’ estimates have been applied to data extracted from the American Community Survey (ACS) to forecast household vehicle demand at county level. Results show that the national models are transferable to small areas with different geographical and socio-demographic characteristics.