查看文章

The transport sector is one of the major sources of global warming, both from individual travel behaviour (especially car use) and from freight transport (mainly by trucks). Mobility surveys, as well as data collections about travel behaviour, are essential to develop transportation policies and measures which encourage more environment-friendly transport modes. Data quality is a real challenge, mainly because response rates are declining and interviewees are more and more reluctant to respond to burdensome questionnaires. Furthermore, harmonized data are a must for authorities, but in Europe different approaches and data qualities exist. The data needs from the transport sector allow the assessment of past policies, in terms of efficiency and equity. They allow the elaboration of new policies measures at European level (eg to reduce the emissions due to transport).

Mobile communication and positioning technologies including GPS/GALILEO, GSM and Radio Data System (RDS) have advanced rapidly and their costs are decreasing. They demonstrate great potential as survey instruments for tracking individual mobility and travel behaviour as well as freight movements, by enabling to conduct surveys along longer periods (eg a week instead of a day) and providing more accurate data on the spatial and temporal frameworks of travels, together with a relatively low burden for interviewees. Hence, We are at a turning point where aiming at producing guidelines towards European harmonized travel surveys should not miss the opportunities of an advancement by means of new information and communication technologies.