#189: Frontier of Travel Behavior Research: Data, Models, and Infrastructure To Understand How People Move, Cynthia Chen and Ram Pendyala

​Cynthia Chen and Ram Pendyala on What new data, models, and research infrastructure will teach us about how people move

​How well do we really understand why people travel the way they do and what will it take to understand them better?

​I will speak with two leading scholars in travel behavior research: Cynthia Chen, Professor at the University of Washington, and Ram Pendyala, Professor at Arizona State University.

​We will explore:

• ​where the field is heading next: how new mobility data are changing what we can observe;

• ​what we still struggle to understand about human behavior; whether travel surveys remain essential in the age of big data;

• ​the need for open-source tools, shared data infrastructure, and reproducible research;

• ​how AI may reshape the way we study and model human mobility.

• ​What will the next generation of travel behavior research look like and what should transportation researchers and practitioners be preparing for now?