15: Standards and Practice for Multi-Day and Multi-Period Surveys

A significant shift in transport survey practice over the past ten to twenty years has been the increased use of multi-day and multi-period transport surveys to meet various planning and research needs. Increasingly, the standard of a one-weekday trip-based travel survey is being replaced by the multi-day (including weekend day) activity-based travel/time-use/activity survey. This shift is a major boon to travel behaviour researchers. On the other hand, full utilisation of the benefits of multi-day, multi-period surveys has yet to be achieved by the practitioner/consumer of transport survey data (Madre, 2003). The purpose of this chapter is to discuss standards of practice, standardised procedures and guidelines, and research issues related to multi-day and multi-period transport surveys, drawing on the workshop discussions.