My Travel Log – A Continuous Study on Travel in the Calgary Region
Corresponding Author: Kristina Hill, The City of Calgary
Presented By: Kristina Hill, City of Calgary
Abstract
In March 2015,The City of Calgary launched My Travel Log, a continuous household travel survey program, to collect travel behaviour from residents to support a two key initiatives – the on-going development of travel demand models for the Calgary Region and to report on key transportation indicators for the Calgary Transportation Plan. The initial launch was a 2 year proof of concept study intended to test data collection and analysis procedures and determine whether the potential benefits of a continuous travel survey would be realized.
Resource Systems Group Inc. was retained in 2014 to provide survey design assistance and to operate the survey for two data collection years (ending in 2016.) The study area included the City of Calgary and three surrounding counties. The City targeted 1,200 randomly selected households across the study area and 300 households were selected to oversample specific areas of the city. Oversampled areas included the area of effect for a new light rail line and under sampled areas from previous household travel surveys.
Some key benefits to a continuous surveys are the ability to conduct trend analysis to support performance metrics, conduct variety of studies related to travel behaviour, and reduce susceptibility to loss of staff and one-time events. My Travel Log has already begun to realize some of these benefits as three additional programs intend to use My Travel Log to report on mode split indicators. Further, the in-place survey architecture enabled The City to conduct an add-on survey targeting households living in residences with a secondary suite. This study has enabled senior management to respond to city council and public perceptions with data. Lastly, My Travel Log has experience the impact of an unforeseen event when the local printer declared bankruptcy. The continuous nature of the survey ensured that even though three weeks of data collection were lost, the study was still able to meet annual targets.
The City of Calgary has been satisfied with the performance of My Travel Log and intends to extend data collection into 2017 and beyond.