Measuring long-distance travel

Abstract

Analysis of long-distance travel demand has become more relevant in recent times. The reason is the growing share of traffic induced by journeys related to remote activities, which are not part of daily life. In today’s mobile world, these journeys are responsible for almost 50 percent of the overall traffic. Traditionally, surveys have been used to gather data needed for the analysis of travel demand. Due to the high response burden and memory issues, respondents are known to underreport the number of journeys. The question of the real number of long-distance journeys remains unanswered without additional data sources. This paper uses an alternative data source, mobile phone data, and compares its results for long-distance travel demand with the national household travel survey (Mikrozensus Verkehr 2015). We take a sample of mobile phone data covering 12 months, and identify the number of long-distance trips. The results indicate that the number of long-distance trips is close in these two data sources.