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vPreface On May 21 through 23, 2006, the TransportationReseach Board (TRB) convened the Innovationsin Travel Demand Modeling Conference in Austin, Texas. The conference was sponsored by the fol- lowing agencies, organizations, and companies to pro- vide an opportunity for a frank exchange of ideas and experiences among academics, model developers, and practitioners: TRB, FHWA, FTA, the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority, PBS&JâAustin, URS Corpo- ration, and HNTB Corporation. Approximately 220 individuals from across the transportation research communityâat national, state, regional, and local levels and from the public and pri- vate sectors and academiaâparticipated. BACKGROUND The last major conference on specialty travel demand modeling was held as part of the U.S. Department of Transportationâs Travel Model Improvement Program (TMIP) in the fall of 1996. At that time, there was little research and no practical application of land use models and activity-based travel demand models and their inte- gration with demographic, economic, and network modes. Since then, there has been a literal revolution in travel demand forecasting. In particular, significant advances have been realized over the past decade in sur- vey methods and analysis tools available to the travel demand modeling profession. CONFERENCE PLANNING To plan this conference, TRB assembled the Committee for Innovations in Travel Demand Modeling: A Conference, appointed by the National Research Council. Under the chairmanship of Chandra R. Bhat, University of Texas at Austin, and Ken Cervenka, North Central Texas Council of Governments, the planning committee identified three objectives for the conference. The first was to examine advances in travel demand modeling. The second was to facilitate the sharing of ideas and information among aca- demics and practitioners on the opportunities and the chal- lenges associated with the implementation of advanced travel models. The third was to identify additional needs for research, education, and training to ensure that the travel demand modelers of today and tomorrow are ade- quately prepared to apply the new model techniques. After identifying the three main objectives and, hence, topic areas, the committee issued a call for papers, seeking high-quality white papers of three to five pages addressing the themes of the interactive sessions. The themes included ⢠Data needs to support activity-based and land use microsimulation models; ⢠Innovations in survey data collection to support travel demand forecasting; ⢠Population and household synthesis; ⢠Validation and assessment of activity-based travel models; ⢠Implementation of activity-based models; ⢠Emerging traffic microsimulation applications; ⢠Innovations in traffic assignment and improve- ments of forecast speeds; ⢠Institutional, monetary, staff, data, hardware, and training resources needed to move innovative approaches to practice; and ⢠The role of models in decision making in the con- temporary decision-making context. The final versions of these papers are reproduced in Volume 2.