ATLANTA - August 11, 2014—It’s not just country back roads and sprawling planned neighborhoods. Rural and non-urban transportation planners serve the complex travel needs of more than 59 million Americans. However, until recently, gathering accurate data about when and where people travel in these less-populated areas has been virtually impossible.

Today, digital technology, which provides actual location data rather than synthesized or borrowed models, is paving the way for the most sophisticated rural transportation plans the industry has seen.  

A new white paper from AirSage® —the largest provider of consumer travel trends and population movement intelligence in the U.S.— documents how rural and non-urban travel planning is changing.  “Cast a Wider Planning Net: Using Cost-Effective Technology to Analyze Regional and Rural Locations” examines the challenges non-urban areas present for transportation planners and others who need more comprehensive and accurate travel and population movement data.

AirSage technology, which captures data from 100 million mobile devices, can often provide cellular data collection at 90% savings compared to traditional methods of data collection. In addition, data can be collected any time of day, 365 days a year.

“Cellular data is helping create travel models of less-populated areas based on actual, current, local data which replaces the traditional, purely synthetic models,” said Cy Smith, CEO and Founder of AirSage. “Planners who build models for rural areas have another option that often costs one-tenth the amount of a traditional survey and provides a far greater volume of data with reduced data bias.”   

The AirSage white paper:

• Examines how mobility data from 600,000 mobile devices was used to calibrate the Triangle Regional Model (TRM).

• Highlights the benefits of data fusion—combining mobility data with traditional research and U.S. Census information—to create more accurate and more detailed models.

• Showcases how digital technologies can be used to validate data collected by traditional means.

• Presents case study findings from four rural travel model projects that were created using mobility data.

• Shares some of the surprising insights that mobility data provides, including resident vs. nonresident trips and carpooling trips vs. visitor trips.

In a recent study, Leta F. Huntsinger, PhD, PE, and Rick Donnelly, PhD, AICP, both with Parsons Brinckerhoff Systems Analysis Group described the benefits of passively collected cellular data as “...a low-cost option for travel model validation.”

Download the AirSage white paper today http://www2.airsage.com/PlanetizenPaper.

About AirSage

AirSage®—a pioneer in population analytics—is the largest provider of consumer locations and population movement intelligence in the U.S. Each day, AirSage uses patented technology to capture and analyze more than 15 billion anonymous, real-time, cellular-signal data points to identify travel patterns and transportation trends. Partnerships with the nation’s largest wireless carriers give AirSage exclusive access to data from more than 100 million mobile devices. Analyzed and aggregated, AirSage data provides actionable insights into where and when people travel and is transforming the transportation industry, commercial enterprises and a diverse range of industries. Find AirSage online at http://www.airsage.com and on Twitter @AirSage.