Design and implementation of a smartphone-based system for personal travel survey: case study from New Zealand

This study introduces a new smartphone-based system for performing personal travel data collection. The system, SITSS (Smartphone-based Individual Travel Survey System), is designed to deal with the challenges associated with applying smartphones in real-world travel surveys, including battery depletion, participant’s involvement and privacy concerns. A prompted-recall smartphone-based data collection approach was employed in the development of SITSS to facilitate the procedure of data collection while improving the accuracy of collected data. The system was employed as a part of the national household travel survey of New Zealand to investigate the various aspects of performing a national level travel survey using smartphone. The study confirmed the successful performance of SITSS in a multi-day travel survey. Participants found the data collection procedure as an interesting experience, and 71% of them continued their participation beyond the expected data collection interval. Participants found the procedure of data collection fairly straightforward and 94% of them could complete the task without any support request. In addition, it was found that the smartphone application did not interrupt participants’ interaction with their smartphones. The battery saving algorithms employed in the application could satisfactorily preserve the battery life of the smartphone. The study also addressed other challenges associated with implementing SITSS, including the procedure for labeling trips, respondent’s experience with the data collection method, and concerns related to the performance of the smartphone application.