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TRANSPORT SURVEY METHODS: KEEPING UP WITH A CHANGING WORLD

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TRANSPORT SURVEY METHODS: KEEPING UP WITH A CHANGING WORLD

EDITED BY

PATRICK BONNEL

ENTPE-LET, Lyon, France

MARTIN LEE-GOSSELIN

Université Laval, Québec, Canada

JOHANNA ZMUD

NuStats, USA

JEAN-LOUP MADRE

INRETS, Paris, France

United Kingdom • North America • Japan

India • Malaysia • China

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2009

Copyright © 2009 Emerald Group Publishing Limited

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the text, illustrations or advertisements. The opinions expressed in these chapters are not necessarily those of the Editor or the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-84855-845-8

List of Contributors

Preface

About every three years the international transport survey community gets together to discuss innovation and quality in transport survey methods and document those discussions in a publication. As this has been happening since 1979, one has to ask: Do we really need another book on survey methods in transport? The answer is ‘Yes, If…’ with the ‘If’ involving whether there have been recent changes that make the capture of transportation data through surveys materially different than they were years ago when other books on the topic were published. One obvious example of a recent change is the need for new data, models, and other analytical tools to support greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction and energy efficiency policies in nations around the globe. Another example is the proliferation of new and affordable information technologies that survey designers can employ to collect and process data, helping them confront increasing barriers to participation in surveys, barriers that in some cases arise from the same technologies, such as developments in telephony. This book focuses on such changes, and on the opportunities and challenges they represent, both for improved survey methods and for the comparability of the data that they provide to different agencies and countries.

As statistical surveys attempt to address GHG issues, and other important transportation policy and planning challenges, they exhibit evidence of success, yet at the same time they frequently come under threat. The evidence of success is that surveys are ubiquitous in the transport world. Almost all countries in the world use them to measure passenger travel, freight movements, or public transit ridership. Leaders in government use survey results to guide policy, and the call from their advisors for more data to address greater challenges is increasing. However, funding for data collection is too often an easy target in difficult economic times, such as the present, and surveys must be credible, transparent, and of assured quality. The papers in this book are thus relevant to government, transport industry practitioners, academic scientists, and commercial researchers.

The book provides a review of the current state of transport survey methods for capturing data in several key areas: freight, personal travel, tourism, evacuations and related travel, and the environmental footprint of transport, among others. It captures the essence of discussions at the 8th International Conference on Survey Methods in Transport that took place in Annecy, France, in 2008. Conference participants from over 25 countries included leading survey researchers and transport professionals representing industry and government policy makers, as well as academic scholars and researchers.

The Annecy Conference succeeded in its main objectives: sharing up-to-date information and experiences on transport survey methods; fostering discussion of mutual problems and issues that affect survey design, data processing, and reporting; proposing and suggesting new initiatives and future approaches for the measurement of critical transportation system indicators; and feeding the results of these discussions into a permanent record in the form of this peer-reviewed book. The book is not a proceedings volume, but a peer-reviewed selection of about one-third of the papers that were presented, as well as a synthesis of 16 workshops.

An editorial committee guided the work that led to this book. It consisted of the four co-editors: Patrick Bonnel, Martin Lee-Gosselin, Jean-Loup Madre, and Johanna Zmud, who also served as co-chairs of the Conference. These four, together with the help of Jimmy Armoogum, divided up the editorial oversight. They built on the considerable efforts of the many people and organizations, recognized in the Acknowledgements that follow. We are indebted to all those who donated their time and energy to review, critique, and add to our body of knowledge about transport survey methods, in order to continuously improve the quality of transport surveys and enhance the value and utility of the data that such surveys provide for transport policy and decision-making.

Finally we, the co-chairs of the ISCTSC, thank all the Annecy authors for their diligence and hard work. We are confident that their continued diligence will lead to new insights for, and new approaches in, transport survey methods.

Martin Lee-Gosselin

Johanna Zmud

ISCTSC Co-Chairs

Acknowledgements

The series of international transport survey conferences and the published record is under the responsibility of the ISCTSC. For the period leading up to the Annecy Conference through to the completion of this book, the members were:

It was with great sadness that we learnt, in February 2009, of the death of Ryuichi Kitamura. Ryuichi was a source of endless energy and inspiration among the international community of those concerned with data on travel, communication and activities. He saw well beyond transport networks, caring deeply about the data needed to help communities become more responsive to human values. He was one of a kind and we miss him very much.

The success of the Annecy Conference was owed to nearly two years of painstaking preparations by the Local Organising Committee (LOC) in France, co-chaired by Patrick Bonnel and Jean-Loup Madre, both of whom have also been longstanding members of the International Steering Committee (ISCTSC), and who took a very active role in the scientific programme as well. The LOC comprised:

Patrick Bonnel, Laboratoire d'Economie des Transports (LET-ENTPE) (Co-Chair)

Jean-Loup Madre, Institut National de la Recherche sur les Transports et leur Sécurité (INRETS) (Co-Chair)

Jimmy Armoogum, Institut National de la Recherche sur les Transports et leur Sécurité (INRETS)

Gerard Brun, Ministère français de l’Ecologie, de l’Energie du développement durable et de la Mer, direction de la recherche et de l’animation scientifique et technique (DRAST)

Marc Christine, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE)

Mary Crass, International Transport Forum (ECMT/OECD)

Marie-Odile Gascon, Centre d’Etudes sur les Réseaux, les Transports, l’Urbanisme et les constructions (CERTU)

Emmanuel Raoul, Ministère français de l’Ecologie, de l’Energie du développement durable et de la Mer

In addition, our sincere thanks to Christophe Rizet of INRETS for all the arrangements needed to make possible holding the final meeting of COST Programme 355 in collaboration with the ISCTSC meeting.

A meeting of the size of the Annecy Conference also depended on the support of many staff. We are particularly indebted to Florence Toilier of ENTPE for her patient resolution of many logistical questions and the production of the conference CDROM, Peter Endemann of Planungsverband Ballungsraum Frankfurt/Rhein-Main and the ETC for so effectively running the Conference secretariat at Annecy (in five languages), to Pierre-Olivier Flavigny and Philippe Marchal of INRETS for organising the most hospitable Internet facilities that any of us have seen heretofore at a conference, and to the staff of Les Balcons du Lac d’Annecy.

The ISCTSC would also like to recognise that the Annecy Conference would not have been possible without the generosity of our sponsors, who provided financial, material and/or staff support. In addition, the sponsors made it possible to continue ISCTSC’s commitment to invest in our future by providing scholarships to participants from lower-income countries and some support to new researchers and students. They were:

• •

  La Direction de la recherche et de l’animation scientifique et technique (DRAST), Ministère français de l’Ecologie, de l’Energie du développement durable et de la Mer

• •

  Ecole Nationale des Travaux Publics de l’Etat (ENTPE), France

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  Institut National de la Recherche sur les Transports et leur Sécurité (INRETS), France

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  Laboratoire d’Economie des Transports (LET), France

• •

  NuStats, United States

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  PTV AG, Germany

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  Service de l’Observation et des Statistiques (SOeS), Ministère français de l’Ecologie, de l’Energie du développement durable et de la Mer

• •

  The Urban Transport Institute (TUTI), Australia

In addition to these sponsors, we are most grateful for the many individuals in the world community of transport survey researchers and practitioners who donated their time and expertise as authors, reviewers, chairs, discussants and rapporteurs. More than 100 extended abstracts and papers were reviewed, and in the case of papers selected for this book, by three reviewers.

The preparation of the book was greatly aided by the counsels of Zoe Sanders and Claire Ferres of Emerald Group Publishing Limited, and the work of ISCTSC’s copy-editor Christopher Parker. We thank them for their attention to detail.