1953 Detroit Metropolitan Area Traffic Study - Data Discovered ...
Jeffrey Lin calls my attention to recovered microdata from the 1953 Detroit Metropolitan Area Traffic Study, available here:
He re-discovered these data at the UCLA data archive and asked the UCLA library to post it to Dataverse. This is one of the first travel surveys, led by Douglas Carroll himself (the progenitor of the four-step transportation planning model).
In a recent working paper, "Freeway Revolts!" Lin and Jeff Brinkman use these data to estimate the “barrier effects” of urban highways.
The Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive remains a useful place for historic surveys, and newer surveys can be found at the NREL Transportation Secure Data Center.