National Travel Surveys in Finland

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1 XXVII International Baltic Road Conference August 24-26, Riga National Travel Surveys in Finland Tytti Viinikainen Sociologist, MSocSc Finnish National Road Administration Hanna Kalenoja Senior Research Scientist, M Sc (Eng), Lic Tech Tampere University of Technology Department of Business Information Management and Logistics hanna.kalenoja@tut.fi The National Travel Survey provides an overall picture of passenger mobility and its background, as well as demographic, geographic and temporal variations in mobility. The Finnish survey has been conducted every six years. The latest data is from and was collected by interviewing over Finns by telephone. The study was conducted over the course of a full year and for every day of the year, in order to provide an accurate picture of temporal variations in mobility. The survey was financed by the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the Finnish National Road Administration and the Finnish Rail Administration. The next National Travel Survey will be conducted in Since the last survey, there has been some development in the international practices of conducting travel surveys. At the moment, the decisions for the methodology of the next National Travel Survey are being made. In this paper we summarize the results of the previous survey, and describe the planned methodology for the next survey. Trends of passenger mobility in Finland To sum up some results from the survey : Finns make an average three daily domestic trips with a total length of 42 kilometres. These trips last in total an hour and ten minutes. The average length of domestic trips is 15 kilometres and their average travel time is 25 minutes. Most of the trips are made by car. Passenger cars have a 58 percent share of trips and public transport has an 8 percent share. The total travel distance grew slightly over five percent from the previous study. On average every Finn travelled daily over two kilometres more than in The amount of trips remained stable, but trips were longer than before. The largest growth was in trips to work and the second largest growth in shopping and personal business related trips. Interestingly, the amount of leisure trips had fallen, but they were longer than before. The above mentioned growth in total travel distance was mainly in passenger car use. Travel by foot and bicycle declined. The passenger car had replaced some non-motorized trips, but most 1

2 importantly the growth in car use created completely new travel. Air travel was the most successful form of public transport with other public transport modes losing market share. 3 % 17 % work place or work related place 7 % 0,1 % school or place of study 0,1 % 7 % home 1 % 25 % 2 % 1 % 26 % leisure activity 4 % shopping or personal business 2 % 5 % Figure 1. The share of trips in the different origin-destination groups in the Finnish National Travel Survey. The most important trip groups are trips between home and leisure activities as well as home and shopping/personal business activities. Mobility is closely linked with one's situation in life. Children and young people make as many trips as adults, but their trips are shorter. Parents travel significantly more than the rest of working population. Men travel more than women during adult life. Mobility generally begins to fall after retirement age and is lowest for over 75 year olds. Comparing the situation in to , more families had purchased their second and third cars. At the same time car usage among women with driving licenses grew by a fifth. No similar growth can be seen in men's car usage. According to the survey of , growth in income correlated with growth in travel up to an annual income of 50,000 euros. For higher incomes the mobility indicators start to decline. The trips made by the highest earning women were mostly work related, and these women made less leisure trips than women with lower incomes. This phenomenon was not present in the same magnitude for men. Car use also grows as income increases. Women's car use levels out when annual income reaches approximately 30,000 euros, but men's car use continues to grow even for the highest income categories. Changes in travel patterns affecting the focus of travel surveys Due to the changes in time use habits and society by large the travel patterns have changed during the last decades. According to the latest measurements by the Finnish Road Administration, the growth in passenger traffic has turned down - most likely due to the economic decline. In urban regions, the focus of population growth in the fringe areas and surrounding municipalities has lead to a dispersing community structure and growth in commuting. Other ongoing trends that affect 2

3 mobility are the growing number of one-person households, population ageing and changes in the networks of public and private services. These trends create an interesting background for the next National Travel Survey. In addition, the absolute number and the share of leisure travel have increased. Also the number of shopping trips has increased, as well as the trips that are made to escort other members of the family to different destinations. Leisure, escort and shopping trips are still known rather poorly, although for example leisure travel corresponds for more than a third of the passenger mileage. Most of the travel surveys in Europe do not distinguish in detail the trip purpose of the leisure travel - for example in the Finnish NTS the leisure trips are divided into visiting friends or relatives and summer cottages. All other leisure destinations are combined in the large group of other leisure travel. This large group of destinations is very heterogeneous, as the leisure destinations can include e.g. jogging in the home environment, attending a hobby, theatre or sports event, or a holiday trip of several days. Also shopping trips can have a nature of leisure travel, especially shopping trips of other commodities than groceries. In order to assess the possibilities to affect the leisure travel demand by the means of land use and transportation system planning, more information about the leisure travel and its underlying factors is needed. Information about the travel demand of leisure activities is still relatively inadequate for the purposes of urban planning and traffic planning. In this perspective it can be concluded that the national travel surveys have rather unsatisfying destination groups in the viewpoint of understanding the needs for leisure travel. The focus has been traditionally on the commuting trips and trips to schools or other places of study. personal business 10 % day care, nursery; 2 % personal business (e.g. bank, office, doctor); 6 % other business work place; 17 % work 22 % summer cottage; 3 % other leisure (amusement, hobbies, recreation); 16 % leisure 36 % second work place; 0 % work related destination; 5 % school or place of study 8 % studying 8 % visiting friends or relatives; 17 % grocery shop ; 15 % other shop; 8 % shopping 23 % Figure 2. Combination of different destinations in the Finnish National Travel Survey (other destinations than home). 3

4 Recent development in travel survey methodology As mentioned above, in Finland the National Travel Survey has been conducted by telephone. Before the telephone interviews the respondents are provided with research forms in order to support the interviews. The material mailed to the respondents includes also travel diaries for the studied day and over 100 km trips In the interview, each respondent is asked for 1) background information, 2) information concerning all trips made during one randomly selected day and 3) information about any trips over 100 kilometres in length made in the last four weeks. For each trip made during the studied day and each trip over 100 km the information requested included the travel time, travel distance, purpose of travel and travel mode. The basic structure of the Finnish survey is quite similar to National Travel Surveys in other European countries. The methodology of the survey varies from country to country, but a one-day survey conducted over the course of a full year has become an established practice in European surveys. However, there are some methodological innovations emerging in the research literature on travel survey methods. These include continuous surveys and panel surveys, web based or GPS based surveys as well as the use of qualitative methods to support the survey (Armoogum & Axhausen 2008; Stopher 2008). Many of these methods rise to the challenges of travel behavioural changes and the need to interpret underlying reasons behind the travel choices. A mutual trend in almost all countries has during the recent decades been the declining response rate of the travel surveys. The gradual decrease of the response rate has made it impossible to conduct the surveys as mail questionnaires and increased the popularity of telephone interviews. However, during the last decade also the response rate of phone interviews has declined and the share of respondents without a reachable phone number has increased. Some countries have returned to home interviews in order to decrease the nonresponse rate. Especially internet based surveys have been assessed to become more common as travel survey methods in the forthcoming years. In general, internet based surveys can complement telephone interviews as many of the respondents would rather choose attending the survey via internet than phone. As the respondent can choose the time and place for attending the survey, internet offers more freedom and flexibility. Already today there is a large number of people who are used to utilize internet in their daily lives and would prefer the internet as a research media. In general, new inquiry methods have been anticipated to become common in National Travel Surveys. With help of GPS device and data loggers information about origin and destination and the time of the trips can be collected more accurately and without increasing the burden for the respondent. However, even with data loggers information concerning the purpose for travel and related background information has to be gathered by interviews. New techniques often require also more engagement and interest from the respondent, as the device has to be carried along for the research period. New techniques may increase the survey costs but on the other hand increase the quality and scope of the research data. (Armoogum and Axhausen 2008.) Large National Travel Surveys should, according to the recent studies, be complemented by smaller qualitative studies or separate surveys for different kinds of respondent groups, who are often underrepresented in the large surveys (Armoogum and Axhausen 2008). Some of these surveys could be conducted as further surveys, in which part of the respondents would after the NTS interview receive an additional mail or internet inquiry on a specific theme of travel behaviour. These themes could be for example public transport level of service, travel patterns of elderly people given up their driving licences or travel patterns of distance workers. 4

5 In many European countries traditional cross sectional NTS have been complemented by longitudinal surveys offering more information about the travel habits and the variations in travel choices during several weeks or months. For example in the German MOP survey the travel patterns of the same respondent group has been surveyed with a one week travel diary once in a year for three years (Kuhnimhof and Chlond 2007). The sample consists of respondents of which 500 changes annually. Web-based surveys have been assessed to be especially suitable for panel studies and collecting longitudinal data of travel patterns (Bonnel and Bayart 2007). Longitudinal surveys can offer valuable information of underlying reasons for travel choices. They have been anticipated to establish an important role as complementary surveys for traditional crosssectional surveys. (Stopher 2008; Schlich and Axhausen 2003.) In addition to longitudinal panel surveys, biography surveys have become more common during the recent years. The biography survey collects data of travel habits during the respondents lifetime. Surveys aim to study what kind of trips the respondent has made and which modes respondent has used during each phase of life. Biography surveys have been assessed to offer important information of changes in individual travel demand during the lifetime. The data can also be utilized in the assessment of measures affecting the travel choices. For example in France a biography survey has been conducted every tenth year beginning in (Armoogum and Axhausen 2008.) Plans for the Finnish NTS The needs and opportunities to develop the Finnish National Travel Survey were studied in a preliminary study in autumn The goal was to provide background information for the preparation of the NTS The purpose was to improve the contents of the survey without decreasing the comparability to the earlier surveys. The pre-study addressed the possibilities to increase the co-operation between the national travel survey and other surveys measuring the travel patterns directly or indirectly in order to combine databases of different surveys more easily. These other surveys include e.g. the Border Interview Survey and Labour Force Survey (see Statistics Finland, The NTS is recommended in the future to be conducted every fifth year in order to facilitate combining of the data to GIS data of urban form and other background statistics. The sample size of the NTS is recommended to be enlarged in the urban areas, in order to improve the possibilities for regional analyses and provide information for local municipalities for modelling traffic and to follow up the demand for transport on the regional level. Internet-based inquiry is recommended to be utilized as a complementary research method especially for the respondents without available phone number and the respondents that would prefer internet in taking part in the study. The database of the National Travel Survey is recommended to be complemented by an internetbased continuous panel survey with a much smaller sample than the NTS. The panel survey would include a travel diary for one week four times a year. This type of panel survey would provide important information of travel patterns and habits as longitudinal data. Conclusions National Travel Surveys provide high quality research data that is needed for transport planning, transport related research and decision making. In Finland, in addition to the reported results of the survey (see the data of the survey is available for further 5

6 research use. The data from has been utilized especially for research on user segments or mobility groups: Identifying segments of the larger population who differ from each other in their travel behaviour. An important focus in the current transport policy is the aim to affect individual travel behaviour. At the same time, individuals lifestyles and travel behaviour are becoming more diverse and less predictable. For these reasons there is a growing need for deeper understanding of people's travel needs. National and local travel surveys offer the basic data on travel behaviour, and new methodological innovations in gathering this data are needed. In addition to this we need surveys on more subjective issues, e.g. people's attitudes and satisfaction on transport policy measures. Another line of research should be further development in qualitative research methods, as face-to-face interviews and focus groups. These methods can deepen our understanding on factors that cause and affect mobility. Literature Armoogum, J. & Axhausen, K Overview of national transport surveys. In Changing Behaviour towards a more Sustainable Transport System. Working group 3. COST Action Bonnel, P. & Armoogum, J National transport surveys What can we learn from international comparisons? Laboratoire d Economie des Transports, INRETS-DEST. COST 355 WATCH, Berlin, November 25, Bonnel, P. & Bayart, C Web Surveys: An opportunity to reduce non-response in tra-ditional household travel surveys. COST 355 WATCH. Group 3: Overview of National Transport Survey. Madrid, 10 May Eurostat Short distance passenger mobility in Europe. Statistics in focus. Transport 5/ The Finnish National Travel Survey (web page). Kuhnimhof, T. & Chlond, B Regional longitudinal travel demand surveys - profiting from synergies. Institute for Transport Studies, University Karlsruhe. COST355, WG3, Ma-drid, 10 May Schlich, R. & Axhausen, K. W Habitual travel behaviour. Evidence from a six-week travel diary. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Transportation, 30, p Stopher, P. R The travel survey toolkit: where to from here? Keynote Paper prepared for the 8th International Conference on Travel Survey Methods, Annecy, France, May Stopher, P. R., Wilmot, C.G., Stecher, C. & Alsnih, R Household travel surveys: Proposed standards and guidelines. ISCTSC, International Steering Committee for Travel Survey Conferences. 8th International Conference on Survey Methods in Transport: Harmonisation and Data Comparability. Annecy, France, May