Research Project Description
Non-motorized Transportation Intercept Survey: Development and Testing
Project Number: 2907
Project Objective
This project will develop a low-budget survey method and related sampling strategy that communities can use to easily, affordably, and reliably document the amount of local walking and cycling.
Co-Principal Investigators:
Kevin Krizek, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Planning and Design, University of Colorado Denver
Ann Forsyth, Ph.D., Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University
Team Members:
Asha Weinstein Agrawal, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Urban & Regional Planning, San Jose State University, Director, MTI National Transportation Finance Center
Project Abstract:
Initiatives to spur more walking and cycling have become increasingly prominent nationwide as one strategy communities are using to tackle the problems of greenhouse gas emissions, traffic congestion, resident quality of life, and public health concerns. But as local governments face hard choices about which programs to fund, decision makers, planners, and residents all seek to understand if proposed policies to increase bicycling and walking modes referred to as active travel will actually work. However, most communities have terribly unreliable means to know how many active travel trips occur in their jurisdictions, let alone where these trips occur, how the numbers may change over time, and whether those trips may be substituting for driving or transit trips. There is at least one important new initiative to develop walking and cycling surveys, the National Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project (NBPD), and this effort has made strides as a central repository of practices and data (Alta Planning and Design 2009). The proposed project will build on this effort to test and refine survey approaches, extend the reach of the NBPD, and streamline it so that communities could have more choices in reliable, low-budget, well documented, and well-tested means to measure active travel.
To fill this gap, we propose to research, develop, and test a suite of survey modules and associated sampling strategies for measuring non-motorized travel at the local level. The modular approach will allow communities to select a survey appropriate to their needs in terms of focus, level of detail, geographic scale, and cost. We will likely employ some questions developed in existing surveys such as the National Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project, but we will also create additional and alternative modules so that local communities can gather data to reliably address a number of pressing policy questions. The survey will be designed to help communities answer such questions as:
• How much walking and cycling is occurring in a given community?
• Where do walking and cycling trips occur?
• What is the purpose of walking and cycling trips?
• What is the degree to which such trips are substituting for auto trips?
• How far are cyclists and pedestrians traveling?
In contrast to a mere documentation or demonstration project, the basic and applied research required to robustly complete this work will make several important contributions:
• The surveys will be tested for reliability across administrations so-called test-retest reliability to ensure that the questionnaire captures the needed data. This reliability testing will be a unique contribution of the research project, as very few travel surveys have been tested for reliability.
• Survey question sources and justifications will be well documented so communities can understand why they are included and where they have been used before. This is again unusual in transportation.
• We will provide alternative sampling strategies with associated rationales so that communities can select the best models for their needs.
The survey modules will assist communities with planning and decision-making across a wide range of activities. For example, the survey modules will allow communities to:
• Assess changes in active travel over time, to see if the community is meeting targets it may have in terms of promoting active travel as a strategy to improve public health or reduce motorized trips and their associated greenhouse gas and air pollution emissions.
• Reliably measure the safety of active travel. Lacking good data on the number and distance of active travel trips, it is extremely difficult to measure pedestrian and bicycle safety, because the number of crashes is most meaningful when expressed in relationship to the amount of travel taking place.
• Assess whether different land-use patterns within the community correlate with different levels of active travel (in terms of numbers of trips, length of trips, etc).
• Incorporate bicycling and walking into the transportation demand modeling process.
Task Description:
Task 1: Peer Group
Create practitioner peer group to review work in progress.
Task 2: Literature Review
Review existing surveys and sampling strategies with a focus on those that are clearly conceptualized and/or have been widely used.
Task 3:Survey
• Develop list of key module areas.
• Compile existing questions relevant to each module.
• Create first cut of questions (expert selection).
• Refine questions in collaboration with practitioner peer group.
• Obtain clearance from SJSU Institutional Review Board.
• Pilot-test the survey with a convenience sample.
• Refine the survey questionnaire.
• Test the survey in two to three local areas, using the sampling approach developed below. This test will involve at least 200 adult respondents.
• Rest the survey with 100 respondents.
• Calculate percent agreement and correlations between surveys at time 1 and time 2.
Task 4:Sampling
• Develop list of potential sampling strategies, drawing on sampling practice and theory
• Select most likely approaches and have these reviewed by statistical consultant and practitioner peer group
• Test sampling approach in two to three areas
• Write short sampling protocol manual, so that local governments can easily apply this strategy
Task 5: Report
Prepare review version of report. This report will include recommended survey modules, sampling strategies, and use protocols. An appendix will provide information on alternative approaches.
Technology Transfer:
We propose to submit at least one paper to a refereed conference, such as the TRB Annual Meeting. We also propose to prepare articles for transportation on the survey and sampling strategies. Results of the project will also be disseminated through the MTI website where those interested will be able to access the final report.
Potential Benefits of Project:
Across the country, local governments struggle to measure walking and bicycle use. A local transportation planner looking through this literature will find documentation of many possible survey options but no clear guidance on which one s/he can use inexpensively and with confidence in the results. Although some of the various surveys in use are excellent for specialized purposes in a very particular location, the surveys are not usually appropriate for widespread use. For example, some surveys have been designed to capture location-specific data, and others are very expensive or technically complex to administer. In addition, local transportation planners seeking a good survey instrument to use find that there has been surprisingly little agreement on a preferred survey protocol, survey instrument, or sampling frame or agreement on what can be concluded from the information acquired.
This research project proposed here aims to fill these gaps by developing a practice-friendly tool that local planners can use to collect active travel data with confidence, knowing that the survey modules and sampling strategy have been carefully tested and evaluated for reliability.
Giving local communities a tool to quickly and cheaply gather data on active travel will allow practitioners and researchers to better answer numerous pressing policy questions, including many of those listed as priorities in the MTI call for proposals. For example, the survey modules will allow communities to gather the data needed to:
• Assess changes in active travel over time, to see if the community is meeting targets it may have in terms of promoting active travel as a strategy to improve public health or reduce motorized trips and their associated greenhouse gas and air pollution emissions.
• Reliably measure the safety of active travel. Without good data on the number and distance of active travel trips, it is extremely difficult to measure pedestrian and bicycle safety, because the number of crashes is most meaningful when expressed in relationship to the amount of travel taking place.
• Assess whether different land-use patterns within the community correlate with different levels of active travel.
• Incorporate bicycling and walking into the transportation demand modeling process.
Important strengths of the survey instrument, as compared to existing options, will be that:
• It will be straightforward and inexpensive to administer. This is an important precondition to making the survey accessible to a wide variety of communities to ensure widespread adoption.
• The modules will be tested for reliability across administrations, a unique contribution of the research project, as very few travel surveys have been tested for reliability.
• Survey question sources and rationales will be well documented so communities can understand why they are included and where they have been used before. This is again unusual in transportation.
• Alternative sampling strategies and their associated rationales will be included so that communities can select the best models for their needs.
Project Funding: $61,859.00
