A GPS-aided survey for assessing trip reporting accuracy and travel of students without telephone land lines

• Published in: Transportation planning and technology Vol. 35; no. 2; pp. 161 - 173
• Main Authors: Dumont, Josée, Shalaby, Amer, Roorda, Matthew J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Taylor & Francis Group 01.03.2012; Taylor & Francis; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Behavior; Demographics; Exact sciences and technology; Geographic information systems; Global Positioning System; GPS; Ground, air and sea transportation, marine construction; Land; land line telephone; Polls & surveys; prompted recall; Reporting; Samples; Satellite navigation systems; Statistical methods; Students; Telephones; Travel; travel survey; trip under-reporting; University students; Canada; North America; America; Travel; Survey; GPS system; prompted recall; Telephone; land line telephone; Transportation; travel survey; GPS; Student; Statistics; trip under-reporting
• DOI: 10.1080/03081060.2011.651878
• ISSN: 0308-1060

A geo-positioning satellite (GPS)-based survey, using a web-based prompted recall tool, was conducted on a sample of 94 students at the University of Toronto from November 2008 to April 2009. The sample included students with and without telephone land lines, allowing for a statistical comparison of demographic and travel behaviour attributes. The same subjects simultaneously completed a traditional trip reporting survey, modelled on the household travel survey in Toronto, allowing for a comparison between the travel behaviour information obtained from the GPS and that reported by the participants in the traditional survey. Students with a land line are more likely to live in houses, with parents, and to live in suburban areas than students without a land line. They also make fewer trips in total, fewer discretionary trips, more transit and auto trips and fewer active trips than students without a land line. By comparing questionnaire-based data and GPS data, we found that most participants reported in the questionnaire either the same number of GPS-based trips or fewer. On average, the GPS survey captured 1.29 more daily trips per participant than the corresponding trips reported in the questionnaire.