Applications of New Technologies in Travel Surveys

摘要

It is clear that GPS technologies have much to offer in the passive collection (or measurement) of detailed travel behaviour data. When enhanced with cellular positioning (such as in A-GPS) and transmission capabilities, GPS logging devices are a powerful tool for collecting multiday and multiperiod survey data with little or no respondent burden. At the last Transport Survey Quality Conference at Kruger Park, Murakami et al. (2003) reported on the benefits, barriers to use, data issues, and utility of technologies for travel surveys. Since then, the expanding use and exploration of technology applications, specifically GPS-based technologies, in travel surveys have furthered the understanding of the issues as well as resolutions. For example, the high costs of GPS studies are driven by equipment and deployment costs. These can be reduced significantly by using smaller sample sizes over longer time periods. The use of wireless or modem-based data transfer methods will also enable participation for extended periods of time. Although it seems unlikely that GPS methods will replace traditional methods any time soon, it seems equally likely that applications of GPS will progress from the traditional use as an auditing tool for reported behaviours to a supplement (e.g., prompted recall) or replacement (e.g., GPS-only) for traditional diary and CATI survey methods - at least on a small scale. In addition, the proliferation and adoption of consumer devices with GPS, cellular, and/or PDA capabilities offers the opportunity to leverage existing hardware already in the hands of study participants for collecting detailed travel behaviour information. The availability of massive vehicle-based GPS datasets collected for other purposes facilitates algorithm development, testing, and implementation for all types of GPS-based travel surveys. As these data processing and imputation routines are proven to be accurate, this reuse or repurpose of data may, in itself, lead to very cost-effective solutions for generating (vehicle) travel behaviour datasets without ever deploying a single GPS device for a travel survey.