RFP - 2026-2027 Atlanta Regional Household Travel Survey

The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the administration of the 2026-2027 Atlanta Regional Household Travel Survey, a comprehensive data collection initiative designed to support the ARC's Activity-Based Travel Demand Forecasting Model. The selected contractor will be responsible for collecting travel behavior data from a minimum of 8,000 households across the 21-county Atlanta Metropolitan Planning Organization area, including Fulton County and surrounding regions. Key deliverables include project management planning, quality assurance and quality control procedures, survey sampling and weighting methodologies, incentive plan development, household recruitment materials, data collection administration, travel behavior analytics, visualization dashboards, and data pipeline development compatible with ARC's ActivitySim modeling workflow. The contractor must develop and deploy survey instruments including a smartphone application for both Android and iOS platforms that complies with Section 508 accessibility requirements and is available in English and Spanish. Proposals will be evaluated based on five weighted criteria: extensive experience in data requirements for regional travel model estimation (20%); working knowledge of statistically based small sample survey research techniques (20%); experience in training and managing data collection personnel for smartphone apps and online questionnaires (20%); experience in editing, quality control, and data reduction tasks (25%); and relative experience and availability of assigned staff (15%). Written questions must be submitted by 5:00 PM on January 5, 2026, with responses posted by January 12, 2026. Proposals, not exceeding 50 pages and submitted as both ten hard copies and one digital PDF file via thumb drive, are due no later than noon EST on January 28, 2026. Contract award is anticipated in March 2026 with an effective date of March 1, 2026, and all work must be completed by July 31, 2027.

The RFP does not include set-aside designations limiting competition to specific organization types; however, a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) participation goal of 28.72% applies as a target rather than a pass/fail requirement, and failure to meet this goal does not impact proposal scoring. DBE certification may be from any state, and DBE participation is encouraged but not mandatory. Respondents must comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, and all DBE utilization requirements, though a separate DBE Utilization Plan is not required at proposal submission. The contract is structured as a Firm-Fixed Price agreement, and the available budget for this project is approximately $1,875,000, comprised of $618,750 in 2026 and $1,256,250 in 2027, contingent upon ARC receiving adequate funding from the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT). No incumbent vendors or current contractors are referenced in the procurement documents. The selected contractor will be provided access to historical survey documentation from the 2011 ARC household travel survey and will have access to necessary data through a secure IT environment, and all proposals will become public records under Georgia Open Records law unless appropriately marked as confidential.