Transport has been called the maker and breaker of cities. A maker of cities because of its vital role in the bringing together of people, goods and services. A breaker of cities because of its effects on the quality of human life and the natural environment. In balancing both aspects, a well-founded cost-benefit analysis of transport policy is imperative. However, compared to the analysis of (external) costs, the analysis of benefits is hampered by the low availability of travel diary data. Travel diary data reveals the usage that individuals make of the transport system. It shows which people travel from where to where, at what times, for what trip motives and by what transport modes. If such data were available for a large proportion of the population, a well-founded benefit analysis could be implemented. However, due to its high collection cost, travel diary data is only available for small to very small sample fractions of the population. This means that although a household travel survey may well include 100,000 individuals in total, when zooming in on the functioning of specific transport infrastructure, only a handful of relevant observations remains. This report proposes a method to use elements of all unused observations to estimate travel diary data as it is the most likely to have been reported for a selection of interest. (Author/publisher)
Abstract