Neural networks are explored as an alternative to a regres-sion model for prediction of the number of daily household vehicular trips. This study focuses on contrasting a neural network model with a regression model in term of variable selection as well as the appli-cation of these models for prediction of extreme observations, The differences in the models regarding data transformation variable selec-tion and multicollinearity are considered. The results indicate that the neural network model is a viable alternative to the regression model for addressing both messy data problems and limitation in variable structure specification.