About Us

COG is the one place in metropolitan Washington that regularly brings leaders together to develop solutions to the region's major challenges. COG prepares plans enabling the region to receive federal funding, provides members with research and data to inform decision-making, and offers a wide range of programs, including commuter services, cooperative purchasing, technical assistance and grants, and public outreach campaigns.

Transportation

Through the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB), area officials, planners, and engineers ensure a well-managed and maintained transportation system. The TPB, which is staffed by COG, conducts the federally mandated transportation planning process for the region and ensures the uninterrupted flow of federal transportation funds that area jurisdictions receive.

Environment

COG's work engages leaders in various environmental fields from water quality experts to climate scientists. Together, they are advancing regional efforts to restore local waterways, improve air quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change, promote recycling, and enhance and preserve green space and agriculture.

Community

Area officials and experts, including planning and housing directors and child welfare and health officials, work together with their counterparts at COG to help shape stronger communities throughout the region.

Homeland Security & Public Safety

COG brings police chiefs, fire chiefs, emergency managers, and other leaders together as part of its work to strengthen regional public safety coordination, homeland security planning, and emergency communication.

Transportation

Regional Air Passenger Survey & Forecasts

Surveys

Simultaneous, regional surveys of air passengers at all three commercial airports (BWI, DCA, IAD) have been performed in 1973/74, 1981/82, 1987, 1992, 1998, 2000, 2002 and every two years since 2005. These surveys provide data which are essential for the airport system planning and master planning processes.

The Regional Air Passenger Survey is designed as an at-gate lobby interview survey. Interviewers distribute survey questionnaires to departing air passengers in the gate holding areas for pre-selected flights, and then collect the filled out questionnaires as the passengers complete them or as the passengers are called to board their flight. Late arriving passengers are given a survey questionnaire with a postage paid mail-back envelope and asked to fill in the questionnaire during their flight and return it by mail. In the 2013 survey for the first time respondents also had the option of completing the survey online using a smartphone, tablet, or computer.

The questionnaires ask travelers about the purpose of their air travel, how they traveled to the airport (drove, rode transit, etc.), and other information to support the airport system planning and airport ground access planning processes.

Origin/Destination Forecasts

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) publishes Terminal Area Forecasts (TAF) of aviation activity for mainly FAA towered airports. While these forecasts were produced for passenger enplanements, there is no origin/destination work done for the region. Origin/destination information is essential for airport-related transportation studies and for airport master plan landside facility determination. While airport choice depends on a number of differing variables, in the long term, given a certain amount of growth in air travel, a logical division in airport use can be determined.

This project develops an air passenger forecasting technique, based on the technique used in COG's cooperative forecasting program, and an airport origin/destination allocation based on a trip distribution model calibrated from the Air Passenger Survey data. This origin/destination data is then used to update airport ground access forecasts.

Washington-Baltimore Regional Air Passenger Origin/Destination Forecast Update