Generating Individual Travel Diaries Using Large Language Models Informed by Census and Land-Use Data

Abstract

This study introduces a Large Language Model (LLM) scheme for generating key attributes of travel diaries in agent-based transportation models, including purpose, mode and distance, to assess the underlying viability of LLMs for activity generation tasks. While traditional approaches rely on large quantities of proprietary household travel surveys, our method generates personas stochastically from open-source American Community Survey (ACS) and Smart Location Database (SLD) data, then synthesizes diaries through direct prompting. Our study features a novel one-to-cohort realism score: a composite of four metrics (Trip Count Score, Interval Score, Purpose Score, and Mode Score) validated against the Connecticut Statewide Transportation Study (CSTS) diaries, matched across demographic variables. Our validation utilizes Jensen-Shannon Divergence to measure distributional similarities between generated and real diaries. When compared to diaries generated with classical methods (Negative Binomial for trip generation; Multinomial Logit for mode/purpose) calibrated on the validation set, LLM generated diaries achieve comparable overall realism (LLM mean: 0.692 vs. 0.628). The LLM excels in determining trip purpose, and its trip mode predictions demonstrate greater consistency (a narrower Realism Score distribution). Meanwhile, classical models lead to better numerical estimates of trip count and activity duration. Aggregate validation confirms the LLM's statistical representativeness (LLM mean: 0.779 vs. 0.706), demonstrating LLM's zero-shot viability and establishing a quantifiable metric of diary realism for future synthetic diary evaluation systems.