CME professor developing ‘AL-STARS’ system to help transportation planners in Illinois
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Travel demand surveys are important tools used to help plan transportation systems. They collect information about how people travel, including why they travel, how often they travel, and the type of transportation they use.
In the US, the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) collects travel data across the country, while local surveys like the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning’s (CMAP) 2019 My Daily Travel provide more detailed information for the region.
However, fewer people are participating in these surveys than in the past. For example, only about 0.04% of people in the Chicago area responded to recent My Daily Travel surveys.
“This makes it harder to create accurate transportation models and can lead to bias, especially in smaller communities,” said CME Professor Sybil Derrible, who is working directly with IDOT on its 2026 NHTS collection effort. “Surveys often miss important groups, such as low-income residents, people who rely on public transit, and minority populations. In developing countries, travel surveys face even more challenges because of limited resources, cultural differences, and economic barriers.”
In addition, new transportation options and technologies, such as ride-sharing and micromobility —bicycles, e-bikes, and e-scooters — require faster and more detailed data collection methods.
To address these issues, Derrible is developing a new platform called Agentic LLM-powered Synthetic Transportation Agent Response System (AL-STARS).
The platform will allow planners and researchers to test survey questions and transportation scenarios using a synthetic population that represents Illinois residents. It will also generate realistic synthetic travel survey data to help improve transportation planning.
Funded with a $400,000 grant from the Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT) and the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), the project includes an AI-powered review of existing research, development of the AL-STARS framework, and the creation of a web-based AL-STARS tool.
“The goal of AL-STARS is not to replace traditional household travel surveys in Illinois, but to support and improve them,” Derrible said.
At UIC, students will directly contribute to the research. Three research assistants are expected to work on the project. AL-STARS may also be used in the classroom to train students to develop surveys and transportation models.