If you’ve gotten an email or letter in the mail asking you to participate in a study about your daily travel pattern, it’s not a scam or spam.
The Capital Region Planning Commission is conducting a survey of local travel habits in an effort to better track the highways and byways Capital Region residents are using to get around town.
The CRPC last did such a survey in the 1990s, and Baton Rouge has grown a lot since then. Traffic congestion has gotten a lot worse, too. By updating where the regions’ residents go on a daily basis and how they get there, the CRPC can help state and local governments better plan for the future.
“This will allow us to validate models, calibrate models and forecast future conditions on the roadways, says Jamie Setze, executive director of the CRPC.
The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development put up 80% of the $700,000 for the survey, which will go to 160,000 households in the five-parish Capital Region. The Department of Environmental Quality is providing the other 20%.
Participants will be asked to download an app—either for one day or one week—that will accurately track their trips. Setze says it’s a far more efficient system than the one used in the 1990s, when participants had to fill out a diary by hand.
Also an improvement over the old days: those who opt to participate in the survey for one week will receive $10 gift cards for each adult in the household.
Setze hopes to have survey results completed in the next few weeks and expects to have resulted compiled by spring.
(Editor’s Note: This story has been revised from an earlier version to correct the percentage of the DEQ match. Daily Report regrets the error.)
