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6 Standardized Procedures for Personal Travel Surveys
It has long been held by most metropolitan regions that data collected in one region has little
relevance to another region. While there is no doubt that there will be local contextual issues that
may make transfer of data difficult or inappropriate at times, the major reason for this perception
is that each household travel survey is usually sufficiently different in design and execution from
any other survey, the result of which is that comparisons from region to region are completely
obscured by methodological and implementation differences. If consistent procedures were
applied in the collection of such data, many of the apparent differences between regions may well
disappear. In addition, there are often slight variations in question phrasing that are sufficient to
introduce major barriers to comparing data; appropriate standardization could remove these bar-
riers. This could also lead to a greater willingness of regions to borrow data from each other, and
thus reduce the overall necessity to expend so much on collection of new data. It would also help
the recognition and capture of travel among regions and, of particular importance, enable relating
local to national surveys.
The issue of standardizing personal travel surveys was investigated in this study. This involved
reviewing past practice, conducting analyses on data sets collected in past travel surveys, conduct-
ing new travel surveys, identifying individual aspects of personal travel surveys that potentially
could be standardized, evaluating these candidate procedures, and then compiling a set of recom-
mended standardized procedures. The execution of this process is documented in the following
pages. Forty procedures in travel surveys are recommended for standardization in this study. An
additional 20 were identified for possible standardization but were either considered to be less
important than those selected or beyond the scope of the project. Included in the report is a sam-
ple Request for Proposals (RFPs) to assist metropolitan areas in commissioning travel surveys that
are consistent with the proposed standardization.
1.2 Study Objectives
The objectives of this project are to develop recommended travel survey procedures that would
lead to an overall increase in the quality and reliability of transportation surveys performed at
household and person levels and would also improve the comparability between surveys. These
recommendations will provide guidance on how to select cost effective survey methods, how to
implement the survey, how to analyze the results, and how to report measures that allow the assess-
ment of the quality of the data. By standardizing the travel survey process, comparability of data
from place to place and time to time will be enhanced. The reliability of the data will be increased,
and doubts as to the applicability of data should be able to be removed. It is also an objective of this
research to identify the costs and tradeoffs for the procedures and assessment measures that are
identified in this research and to establish whether specific procedures and assessment measures
are cost-effective.
There can be negatives to standardization: namely, the stifling of innovation or the creation of
stagnation in a field. Over the past 30 years, many changes have occurred in the conduct of per-
sonal travel surveys, and what constitutes best practice has clearly evolved during this time. If rigid
standards had been applied early in this process, this evolution may well have been prevented from
occurring. Indeed, imposition of rigid standards at the current stage of development of travel sur-
vey procedures would likely retard further development. On the other hand, survey practice has
not evolved all that far during this period of open practice, and there are too many instances where
surveys are conducted that repetitively perpetrate the same errors. In addition, travel survey pro-
fessionals have often remained ignorant of developments and improvements from other fields of
survey practice. Standardization might have prevented certain known pitfalls and errors and raised
the average quality level of travel surveys. The research team was cognizant of these two aspects of
standardization while developing the recommendations included in this research.
