Exploratory Analysis of a Smartphone-Based Travel Survey in Singapore
Authors
Abstract
Future Mobility Survey (FMS) is an innovative smartphone-based travel survey system, that was field tested in 2012/2013 together with the Household Interview Travel Survey (HITS) in Singapore. In this paper, we present findings of exploratory analysis of the data collected in this test.Clustering of day patterns from FMS data reveals large day-to-day variability of user behavior, which cannot be captured by taking a snapshot with a one-day survey. We show that even if we take advantage of cross-sectional variability of a larger sample size from a traditional survey, we would not have achieved the comprehensive set of heterogeneous patterns as provided by FMS. Some common problems in traditional surveys, such as under-reporting of trips, over-estimation of travel times, in accuracy of location and time, can be significantly reduced by FMS. The FMS data, as compared to HITS, has higher resolution and better accuracy. In addition, FMS is well-suited to collect multi-day data as additional cost is marginal and user burden reduces over time.Therefore, it is a promising technology for next generation travel data collection.