Citywide Mobility Survey: Daily Travel Patterns in NYC

NYC DOT's annual Citywide Mobility Survey captures detailed daily travel diaries for residents, including deliveries, remote work, and reasons for non-travel. The Day table records between one and seven travel days per participant, linking to household, person, trip, and vehicle datasets. Columns suggest granular data on daily activity patterns, shopping habits, and trip generation.

Use Cases

• Analyzing daily trip generation patterns using `num_trips`, `travel_date`, and `day_num`.
• Studying the prevalence and frequency of deliveries using `delivery_2`, `delivery_4`, `delivery_5`, `delivery_6`, `delivery_7`, `delivery_9`.
• Investigating reasons for non-travel days using `no_travel_1`, `no_travel_2`, `no_travel_3`, `no_travel_4`, `no_travel_5`, `no_travel_6`, `no_travel_8`, `no_travel_11`, `no_travel_12`, `no_travel_13`, `no_travel_99`.
• Weighting survey responses for citywide or zonal analysis using `day_weight_citywide` and `day_weight_zonal`.
• Linking individual daily records to household and person data using `hh_id` and `person_id`.

Strengths

• Part of a structured annual survey program by NYC DOT, composed of 5 linked data tables.
• Captures detailed daily diaries for up to seven days per participant, providing longitudinal behavioral data.
• Available on multiple public data platforms (Socrata, Data.gov), indicating official dissemination and importance.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, dataset size, license, and author are missing from all provided sources.
• The 'last updated' dates (2026-04-05 and 2026-04-01) are future dates relative to the 2024 survey year, suggesting potential metadata errors or placeholder values.
• Column descriptions are not provided, requiring inference from naming conventions.

Provenance

Source

New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DOT)

Collection Method

Annual survey assessing travel behavior, preferences, and attitudes of NYC residents.

Time Range

2024

Freshness

2026-04-05

Geography

New York City