Smartphone app to automatically collect travel patterns

This project will develop a smartphone application to survey travel patterns. The application will collect sociodemographic information from participants through a baseline survey while travel behaviour data would be automatically collected. Users will be able to review their daily travel patterns, including route choice, mode, and trip purpose, and to submit their data at the end of each day. The intent of the project is to develop a repeatable methodology to collect detailed travel data for a range of applications.

The smartphone application will be tested through a large-scale survey of active transport users to support the development of demand models and investment planning for active transport in Southeast Queensland. Survey participants will be recruited via posts and emails to bicycle and micromobility user groups and peak bodies, and directly at key points on the active transport network in Southeast Queensland.

The survey will be calibrated to collect information about active transport users’ preferences towards active transport, level of confidence and other sociodemographic characteristics. The intent of the project is to better understand active travel demand – what determines people’s choices to use active travel, for what trip purposes, and what determines their route choices.

Participants

• Department of Transport and Main Roads (Queensland)
• Queensland University of Technology

Project background

As cities grow and become denser, transport demand tends to become more complex and multi-modal. While existing methods of data collection that focus on total movements of people within a single mode (e.g. traffic counters and public transit ticketing data) provide useful information, measuring people’s complete travel patterns over the course of a day/week provides more detailed information about how people make choices with respect to travel – where and when to travel, for what purpose, by what mode(s), and what route.

Understanding these movements can provide better information for transport authorities in determining appropriate policies, plans and investments to support broader transport objectives (e.g. traffic congestion, emissions and pollution reduction, mode shift targets).

Household Travel Surveys have historically been used for this purpose, however the level of detail included in these surveys is typically insufficient to answer certain questions, for example they tend to not collect data on route choice, which is highly relevant for active transport, nor differentiate between different active transport modes (e.g. e-bikes, e-scooters, and bikes).

This project aims to develop a smartphone application that would enable the collection of more detailed travel information to support transport planning. It is intended to be developed to support a range of demand studies, including active transport, Mobility as a Service, and other multi-modal and behavioural studies.

The initial application would be within a large-scale active transport demand study in South-East Queensland.

Project objectives

1. Develop a smart phone application and backend system that enables the collection of comprehensive transport and associated socio-demographic data from participants;
2. Trial the application within a large-scale demand study of active transport users in South-East Queensland; and
3. Analyse the data to provide new insights into active travel behaviour and to support the development of active travel demand models and investment planning.

Please note …

This page will be a living record of this project. As it matures, hits milestones, etc., we’ll continue to add information, links, images, interviews and more. Watch this space!