Designing a large-scale travel demand survey: New challenges and new opportunities

Information about travel demand, traveller behaviour and transport systems performance is an essential input to decision making on transport policy, planning and design issues. However, this information is difficult and expensive to collect and establish, so that its collection has been infrequent. Further, previous information technology and past methods for managing travel information have helped to make it expensive to access, maintain and keep current. This paper describes the findings of a research project called the Melbourne Travel Survey Research Projects, undertaken to determine the needs for and likely applications of new travel information for a large metropolitan area (Melbourne, Australia), and to define the desirable form for a new metropolitan travel demand survey program. The research required surveys of the present and anticipated needs for travel demand data and the available and required technology for data collection and information dissemination. The paper describes the findings of the research project, and provides an interpretation of their implications for a large-scale travel survey program.