Travel data collection has always been considered as a fundamental part of all transport
planning studies, and there has been a continuous effort to employ new approaches in order
to increase the accuracy of collected data and reflect the real behaviour of individuals. Many
approaches have been utilized for performing travel surveys, but there are still significant
areas for improvement, as they need considerable financial and human resources, have an
insufficient time-coverage and mostly engage respondents considerably, which sometimes
implies biased results.
This paper introduces a research framework, which is focused on using innovative
technology of smartphones to develop a practical and accurate travel survey approach and
better understand the pattern of individual‟s travel behaviour. The first section of this paper is
devoted to reviewing previous studies and methods of GPS assisted travel surveys. Then
after reviewing available data collection approaches, the appropriate approach to increase
the accuracy of collected data and also reduce the burden on respondents has been
employed. In the next step, ATLAS Project, an iPhone application which has been
developed specifically for travel data collection is introduced and the procedure of designing,
developing and employing of this application is explained.
1. Introduction
Travel survey has been considered as an inevitable part of every travel and transport study.
It reflects the travel behaviour of users and help to better understand the current demand
and plan and prepare the required network and infrastructure for future growth. Traditionally,
travel behaviour data have been collected through paper, phone or interview assisted
surveys, where people are asked to describe their travel behaviour during a limited time
(usually a working day) or to reconstruct their travel behaviour in one or more specific days.
While, all of these conventional methods only rely on the memory of respondents, and also
impose significant burden on respondents and thereby adversely impact the quality and
quantity of the collected data.
Technological improvements in global positioning system (GPS) technology, besides recent
advancements in positioning systems on smartphones, make people and objects growingly
locatable and have provided transportation planners with an alternative and powerful tool for
more accurate travel data collection. The desire to use GPS for travel surveys comes from
the ability to gather the data streams of individuals‟ trajectory, and extract their travel
attributes, such as start and finish times, distances, chosen routes, and interim stop
locations as well as their trip mode and purpose more accurately (Doherty, Papinski & LeeGosselin
2006; Srinivasan, Bricka & Bhat 2009).
This paper aims to introduce a smartphone application, ATLAS Project, which has been
designed specifically for performing travel surveys. This application not only provides the
possibility of extracting the travel attributes of participants based on their travel trajectory, but
also equipped with a specifically designed questionnaire for collecting the socioeconomic
details of participants conveniently. In this paper after a brief overview of previous work, this
application and its different capabilities will be introduced, and then some conclusion will be
made based on the preliminary results of performing travel surveys.