There’s a nice article about the National Household Travel Survey regularly conducted by the US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA):

Lewin, M. (2019) “Learning from the National Household Travel Survey,” http://www.planetizen.com, https://www.planetizen.com/node/102508?utm_source=newswire&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news-02042019&mc_cid=03588de77e&mc_eid=9ccfe464b1 [Last accessed: 2/6/2019]

There is a lot to learn from such surveys and especially if historical results can be compared in order to establish trends and issues. I recall that we attempted to engage the then National Statistics Office (NSO) back in 2005 for them to include certain items in the national census but for the purpose of data collection for inter-regional passenger and freight flow. That didn’t bear fruit but perhaps it is about time to reconsider and for the Philippine Statistics Agency (PSA) to include questions specific to travel in the census.

Ideally, of course, is to have our own national travel survey where we can obtain data not just for inter-regional or even inter-provincial or inter-island passenger and freight transport characteristics. Data from a national household travel survey would give us details on a lot of things including but not limited to the following:

• Average commute data – e.g., commute travel times & commute distances for those taking private or public transport
• Vehicle ownership data – e.g., car, motorcycle and bicycle ownership and usage
• Travel cost data – e.g., various cost components for traveling via private or public transport

Such information can be categorised a number of ways like according to age, gender or income. It will definitely help us understand how people travel including their perceptions and choices. It can help formulate solutions to a lot of issues, transport and traffic-related, that cities and municipalities are trying to address. Of course, this will definitely involve big data but this is not a new thing, and large data sets have been used in many transport studies including those for Metropolitan Manila (e.g., MMUTSTRAP, JUMSUT, MMUTIS, MUCEP) and the inter-regional study (SIRPAFF) we did a decade and a half ago. The advantage now is that we have more sophisticated tools for analysing such data.

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