A Comparison of Internet and Mail-Based Transportation Surveys

Transportation Research Record, 2011

negatively affects the quality of data collected. While standardized procedures are used for these surveys to ensure their quality and reliability and to improve comparability between surveys, much research in recent years has focused on enhancing participation in travel surveys through improved methods, procedures, and tools. As stated a decade ago in the TRB millennium paper on travel surveys, "the conflict between the need for increasingly detailed and frequent data on daily travel patterns and the growing difficulty in contacting and interviewing persons about their travel will require continued improvements in travel survey methods" (1). The authors believe not only that continued improvements in travel survey methods are needed but also that continuous improvement (CI) in travel survey methods is mandatory. The concept of the CI process derives from the Deming theory of management (2). CI is a never-ending effort to discover and eliminate the main causes of problems. It accomplishes this by making improvements in small steps rather than by implementing one huge improvement. CI is a management approach by which processes are constantly evaluated and improved in the light of their efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility. These three characteristics are relevant to the current environment in which travel surveys must be implemented. The fact that CI can be called a management process does not mean that it needs to be executed by management. Management merely makes decisions about the implementation and design of the process. In fact, because travel surveys must be designed and implemented in a partnership between data users [e.g., metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and state departments of transportation] and data providers (e.g., consulting survey research and modeling firms), the application of CI principles will be most effective in such a partnership environment. In the case discussed in this paper, the partnership consisted of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC), the New Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA) and its consultants (NuStats and Parsons Brinckerhoff), and the members of its Steering Committee and Technical Advisory Committee. These partners worked together on the 2010 regional travel survey and its predecessor, the 1997-1998 survey. The Steering Committee is composed of 30 members, including representatives from member agencies of both NYMTC and NJTPA. The five-member Technical Advisory Committee includes one professor (Arnim Meyburg, Cornell University), two MPO survey experts (Guy Rousseau, Atlanta Regional Council, and Neil Kilgren, Puget Sound Regional Council), one FHWA survey expert (Elaine Murakami), and one independent consultant specialized in travel behavior analysis (Nancy McGuckin).

1998

Transportation planners typically use census data or small sample surveys to help estimate work trips in metropolitan areas. Census data are cheap to use but are only collected every 10 years and may not provide the answers that a planner is seeking. On the other hand, small sample survey data are fresh but can be very expensive to collect. This project involved using database and geographic information systems (GIS) technology to relate several administrative data sources that are not usually employed by transportation planners. These data sources included data collected by state agencies for unemployment insurance purposes and for drivers licensing. Together, these data sources could allow better estimates of the following information for a metropolitan area or planning region: (1) Locations of employers (work sites); (2) Locations of employees; (3) Travel flows between employees' homes and their work locations. The required new employment database was created for a large, mul...

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2016

This paper presents best practices for transit survey protocols targeted at small geographic areas such as those in and around transit-oriented development and for households proximate to transit stations. The widespread dissemination of cell phones and rapidly decreasing presence of in-household landlines has made telephone interviewing prohibitively expensive; moreover, the portability of cell phone numbers has confounded small-area probability sampling. A postal mail push-to-web protocol described here is a more cost-efficient approach for small-area data collection, particularly when probability samples are sought. Address files are available from postal databases, and the strategy is to send respondents details on how to access an online questionnaire; continued nonresponse is then followed up, with the final mailed contact including a paper questionnaire. Embedded in the contacting protocol is a survey research experiment in which a method for maximizing response rates, the us...

(Caltrans), and by private grants and donations. The Institute receives oversight from an internationally respected Board of Trustees whose members represent all major surface transportation modes. MTI's focus on policy and management resulted from a Board assessment of the industry's unmet needs and led directly to the choice of the San José State University College of Business as the Institute's home. The Board provides policy direction, assists with needs assessment, and connects the Institute and its programs with the international transportation community. MTI's transportation policy work is centered on three primary responsibilities: MINETA TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE LEAD UNIVERSITY OF MNTRC Research MTI works to provide policy-oriented research for all levels of government and the private sector to foster the development of optimum surface transportation systems. Research areas include: transportation security; planning and policy development; interrelationships among transportation, land use, and the environment; transportation finance; and collaborative labormanagement relations. Certified Research Associates conduct the research. Certification requires an advanced degree, generally a Ph.D., a record of academic publications, and professional references. Research projects culminate in a peer-reviewed publication, available both in hardcopy and on TransWeb, the MTI website (http://transweb.sjsu.edu). Education The educational goal of the Institute is to provide graduate-level education to students seeking a career in the development and operation of surface transportation programs. MTI, through San José State University, offers an AACSB-accredited Master of Science in Transportation Management and a graduate Certificate in Transportation Management that serve to prepare the nation's transportation managers for the 21st century. The master's degree is the highest conferred by the California State University system. With the active assistance of the California Department of Transportation, MTI delivers its classes over a state-of-the-art videoconference network throughout the state of California and via webcasting beyond, allowing working transportation professionals to pursue an advanced degree regardless of their location. To meet the needs of employers seeking a diverse workforce, MTI's education program promotes enrollment to under-represented groups. Information and Technology Transfer MTI promotes the availability of completed research to professional organizations and journals and works to integrate the research findings into the graduate education program. In addition to publishing the studies, the Institute also sponsors symposia to disseminate research results to transportation professionals and encourages Research Associates to present their findings at conferences. The World in Motion, MTI's quarterly newsletter, covers innovation in the Institute's research and education programs. MTI's extensive collection of transportation-related publications is integrated into San José State University's world-class Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. The contents of this report reflect the views of the authors, who are responsible for the facts and accuracy of the information presented herein. This document is disseminated under the sponsorship of the

Transportation Planning and Technology, 2003

In this paper we argue that visualization, data management and computational capabilities of geographic information systems (GIS) can assist transportation stated preference research in capturing the contextual complexity of many transportation decision environments by providing respondents with maps and other spatial and non-spatial information in graphical form that enhance respondents' understanding of decision scenarios. We explore the multiple inherent contributions of GIS to transportation stated preference data collection and propose a framework for a GIS-based stated preference survey instrument. We also present the design concepts of two survey prototypes and their GIS implementation for a sample travel mode choice problem.

Transportation Research Record, 1993

Transportation Research Procedia

We test the effect of different contextualization, scaling, framing and formatting of environmental impacts and health benefits information on commuting mode choice. For this, a stated preference (SP) survey was designed. To also test survey mode effect, the survey was administrated both online and face-to-face. We find statistical differences across the two samples in terms of transport preferences, attitudes and perceptions towards the environment, health and social norms. These could be attributed both to differences in the levels of education and professional occupation and self-selection bias. The results in the models estimated from the SP hint the existence of irrational answers in the web-based sample. Information about global CO 2 emissions appears to be ineffective in influencing mode choice whereas self-centric information about calories consumption is effective.

Travel Behaviour and Society, 2020

This paper presents a surveying method developed and tested in several data collection campaigns for different purposes in the field of urban mobility. The method combines the advantages of personal intercept interviews and online questionnaires to meet the basic requirements of a survey: good data quality, representativeness and minimal costs. Five application case studies in European cities are presented to evaluate and demonstrate the validity of the method and to study people's willingness to complete a survey. The successful application of the method in a variety of research projects proves its validity for survey campaigns to assess different transport policies. The results evidence the validity of the methodology. The response rates obtained were quite high compared with merely online surveysbetween 14 and 22%and the data collected met the quality requirements for each research project where the method was applied. The method combines low cost, reliability and high response rates and therefore clearly contributes to mobility survey performance and sampling practices in transport research.

European Transport Research Review

When introducing new mobility offers or measures to influence traffic, stated preference (SP) surveys are often used to assess their impact. In SP surveys, respondents do not answer questions about their actual behaviour, but about hypothetical settings. Therefore, answers are often biased. To minimise this hypothetical bias, so-called stated preference-off-revealed preference (SP-off-RP) surveys were developed. They base SP questions on respondents’ revealed behaviour and place unknown scenarios in a familiar context. Until now, this method was applied mostly to scenarios investigating the willingness to pay. The application to more complex mode or route choice problems, which require the calculation of routes, has not yet been done. In this paper, the MyTrips survey tool for the collection of SP-off-RP data based on respondents’ actual mobility behaviour is presented. SP questions are based on alternatives to typical routes of respondents, which are calculated on the fly with an i...