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Abstract
The Office of Highway Policy Information of Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) publishes statistical data about motor vehicle registrations reported by the 50 states and District of Columbia. According to its 2020 publication, the 97.94% of vehicles in the State of North Dakota are registered as either private or commercial. The remaining 2.06% are publicly owned. The national averages are 98.51% private or commercial and 1.49% publicly owned.
The actual composition of vehicles plying on the state highways in terms of commercial versus non-commercial (private) is not known. Among other factors, this composition may vary within parts of the state given the nature of land use and level of urbanization. The North Dakota Department of Transportation (NDDOT) is interested in estimating the percentage of commercial vehicles using the state's infrastructure, especially in the western region.
The estimation process is complicated by the large number of companies and workers in the Bakken oil-producing region of North Dakota that come from other states. Therefore, even if the commercial versus non-commercial breakdown of percentages of vehicle types such as passenger cars, pickup trucks etc. within North Dakota were known, they may not represent the true usage of the state's infrastructure by category of vehicles. Additionally, NDDOT is interested in estimating the vehicle occupancy of the non-commercial vehicles.
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