1. Passenger Mobility Statistics Passenger Mobility guidelines
Task Force on
Passenger Mobility Statistics
11 October 2018
Item 5
Passenger Mobility guidelines
Eurostat Unit E3 - Transport

2. TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018
Contents
Project objectives and previous work
Harmonised set of indicators
Passenger Mobility surveys: synthesis results
Proposals for discussion on the content
Questions received from Member States
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

3. TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018
Project objectives
To establish guidelines for harmonised passenger mobility surveys
To develop EU policy relevant indicators on passenger mobility
To finance with grants pilot surveys to collect the established indicators
To provide DG MOVE with harmonised passenger mobility data relevant to EU/White paper policies
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

4. History of the guidelines
First presentation and discussion at the 2015 Eurostat Task Force
Small adjustments to the guidelines following TF meetings in 2016 and 2017, essentially covering:
Passenger car: A reference to UN/ECE class M1 Campers/Caravans
Wheelchairs (motorized) : Mode “Other” instead of “Cycling”
Post Office: Purpose “Personal business” instead of “Shopping”
Clarifications: trip, journey, stage, destination and purpose
Recommendations: Availability questions; Questioning the reason for no trips; Detailed address/coordinate coding of destinations; Reporting of stations/harbors/airports
Plus the relations between these
Loop trips / trips with origin=destination
Which stops should be regarded as a stay and initiates a new trip ?
Formation of journeys from trips !
Driving licence: “Car drivers without driving licence” Bicycle ownership: “Bicycle trips for non-bicycle owners”
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

5. TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018
Further precisions:
Mobile population vs. Total population : more freedom to choose between the two for the survey implementation, results should however reflect total mobility. It seems that indicators on mobile population are more comparable but the figures for the total population are very important
Average day vs. week days/week end : as the option of average reference day may introduce uncertainties, the split between week days and week end is preferred
Urban/non-urban mobility: on the assumption that urban residents are travelling more in urban areas, the respondents residence will determine also the mobility type (in urban or non-urban mobility)
OECD/EC vs. DEGURBA - the OECD/EC definition of urban areas appeared better adapted to surveys; urban area
Pkm attribution for mobility by distance class: territorialisation of traveling is very difficult; the distance travelled will be attributed to the respondents origin
Other minor changes/clarifications: fuel list, drop of activity, clarification of stage, urban mobility by rail covers train/tram/metro
+possible alternative definitions- are removed
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

6. Harmonised set of indicators: what is needed
Short distance (0-299 km, and km),
Medium distance ( km)
Long distance ( over 1000 km)

7. Synthesis results: contents
Reference population
Sample size
Share of trip makers
Number of trips per person / day
Share by purpose
Travel distance / day
Share of daily distance travelled, by travel mode
Travel time / day
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

8. Synthesis results: Reference population
Eurostat Mobility Indicators are asked to be provided by:
- Working day (Monday to Friday), Non-working day (Saturday, Sunday and bank holidays)
- “Urban mobility < 100 km” , “Total mobility < 300 km”
For all of these categories, the reference population remains the same: population living in the country within the age group (inclusive).
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

9. Synthesis results: Sample size
Definition: Number of persons selected for the interview
Difficulties to obtain the sample size for all categories (Urban mobility, Total mobility, Working day, Non-working day).
It is supposed that the major difficulty arises because…
a country may use two different survey instruments to collect Urban and Total Mobility
not only persons are surveyed but also the day (generally one or two days are surveyed)
Possible solution:
=> Give separately the sample size for “mobility <100 km” and for “100 ≤ mobility < 300 km”
=> For a better comparison, the number of days for which each selected person is supposed to respond (from one day to seven days) needs to be known.
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

10. Synthesis results: Sample size
Most of countries reply for “all days”
All days
Croatia
Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Slovenia
Latvia
Romania
Sweden
Total mobility
Urban mobility
Urban mobility*
Sample size
4,914
113,709
35,169
226,569
23,016
11,004
12,204
Response rate
53%
32%
37%
20%
39%
79% 7%
There is a close link between response rate and the survey media ….
Generally: Personal interview > Phone interview > Self interview
The fine tuning of weighting and the response mechanism is more important in small countries.
(* Portugal covered urban mobility in 2 cities)
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

11. Synthesis results: Share of trip makers
Definition: the number of weighted trip-makers divided by the number of weighted respondents
Share of trip makers
Croatia
Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Slovenia
Latvia
Romania
Sweden
Total
Urban
Working day
71%
86%
83%
Non working day
61%
77%
All days
68%
67%
84%
79%
78%
89%
The share of trip makers is higher for working days.
The share of “Total mobility” could be difficult to generate when two different surveys are used to collect “mobility < 100 km” and for “100 ≤ mobility < 300 km”.
According to literature review, for a working day, it appears reasonable to have a trip makers’ share of about 85%.
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

12. Synthesis results: Number of trips per person / day
Croatia
Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Slovenia
Latvia
Romania
Sweden
Urban
Total
Working day
0.45
0.95
1.79
3.00
2.21
1.21
2.89
1.06
1.66
Non working day
0.17
0.36
1.42
2.37
0.82
0.77
2.11
0.29
0.47
All days
0.37
0.78
1.67
2.80
1.74
2.32
2.73
1.08
2.67
1.34
2.13
1.69
2.74
2.46
Reasonable figures for :
a working day: should be about 3.3 trips per day and per person.
A non-working day: should be about 2.0 trips per day and per person.
about 20.5 trips per week (almost 3 trips per day).
There should not be a big difference between “Urban mobility” and “Total mobility”.
Underestimations may be caused by:
The maximum of trips to be described is low
Low share of trip makers
Missing trips such as return to home trip (in self interview surveys)
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13. TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018
Synthesis results: Share of purpose for “all days” and “Urban mobility”
Croatia
Poland
Portugal
Slovenia
Latvia
Romania*
Sweden
Work (commuting)
35%
38%
23%
34%
27%
44%
Professional/ business 1% 2% 3% 4%
Education 6% 7% 5%
Shopping
18%
24%
19%
16%
36%
12%
Escorting
11% 8%
Leisure
10%
20%
Personal business
13% 9%
As the share of purposes seems comparable, it is assumed that the missing trips are those “return to home”.
Guidelines must give better explanations on the calculation procedures.
(* total mobility)
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

14. Synthesis results: Travel distance per person/day(km)
Croatia
Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Slovenia
Latvia
Romania
Sweden
Urban
Total
Working day
4.4
11.6
11.3
38.3
26.5
9.2
34.0
7.8
16.4
Non working day
1.4
4.9
8.9
33.6
20.5
5.9
35.1
2.4
6.8
All days
3.6
9.7
10.6
36.8
23.2
18.4
28.0
8.2
34.3
10.2
4.2
18.5 68
For the Netherlands, the number of trips “100 ≤ mobility < 300 km” explains this high mileage.
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

15. TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018
Synthesis results: Share of daily distance travelled by travel mode (all days and for urban mobility)
Croatia
Netherlands
Poland
Portugal*
Slovenia
Latvia
Romania
Sweden
By passenger car (total)
77%
62%
70%
81%
68%
38%
58%
as driver
59%
50%
55%
57%
65%
26%
as passenger
18%
13%
16%
15% 6%
By taxi (as passenger) 3%
By van/lorry/tractor/camper 1%
By motorcycle and moped 0% 2%
By Metro, Tram
11%
By bus and coach 4% 7%
14%
32%
By train (total) 9% 5%
High-speed train
Regular train
Urban rail
Aviation
Waterways
Cycling
Walking 8%
Other
27%
(* Mobile only)
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

16. Synthesis results: Travel time per person/day (minutes)
Croatia
Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Slovenia
Latvia
Romania
Sweden
Urban
Total
Working day 20 38 34 69 52 25 65 30 46
Non working day 6 15 29 62 59 17 60 9 16
All days 32 33 67 49 53 23 64 39 48
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

17. Proposals for improvement
The following slides will present proposals for improvements of the guidelines that provide clarifications and may address possible errors in calculating the required indicators.
The proposals to be presented were identified by:
a review of the content by different experts
questions received by countries that are doing PM surveys for the first time
issues that were identified in the past not yet addressed
The Eurostat Passenger mobility indicators list remains unchanged

18. TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018
The following elements will be highlighted in the next slides:
Trip purpose: collect the travel purpose ‘return to home’
Trips to/from another country
Age bracket
Avoiding soft refusals
Avoiding proxy interviews
Maximum number of trips to be described
Quota sampling: to be avoided unless there’s no other way
Please present your experience and your view on these issues of discussion
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

19. TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018
Trip purpose (§2.2, page 15)
“return to home” to be considered. Otherwise, especially when data are collected without interviewers, those trips may be missed.
Furthermore, it is much easier to post-process the purpose for the indicators:
Journey with only 2 trips. For example : home-work-home: both trips have as purpose “work”
Journey with more than 2 trips: choose the main purpose of the journey and use this for all trips during the journey (e.g. use the purpose with the longest stay)
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

20. Trips to/from another country (§2.3, page 18)
Trips to/from another country to be measured, if possible.
Otherwise:
the immobility rate may be increased (as one considers those going abroad as persons “staying at home”).
the number of trips is underestimated, as is the distance traveled, travel time, etc.
The picture of mobility is biased, especially for the comparison between smaller and larger MSs…
As travel surveys are conducted to produce the Eurostat indicators and to help a country to build and monitor transportation policies, it is important to analyse a complete picture of the population’s mobility.
including those completely outside the country where the respondent lives
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

21. TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018
Age bracket (§2.2 page 7)
A travel survey may help stakeholders to improve transport accessibility, especially in an ageing society (transport on demand, ... ).
Then it would be better to cover the entire population. It would allow to better understand:
Travel demand for the young (escort, drop-off and pick-up)
Mobility of people with impairment
Another advantage would be a more accurate calculation of the car occupancy rate. This rate is important especially today, with the development of carpooling, car sharing schemes and the concept of mobility as a service.
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

22. TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018
Soft refusal (§4.7 ,page 56)
According to the general literature, the immobility rate should be around 15%.
Interviewers should be made aware of this issue and should be prepared to re-launch interviewees to avoid this soft refusal, either to retrieve the trips actually made or to register the really immobile persons.
Possible solutions :
In the French survey, for each day of the last 7 days the interviewees are asked if they went out of their home; then the day selected is the last day with mobility
Questions on why they were immobile should be addressed, but the item "no need to move" is not very informative.
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

23. Proxy interview of mobility (§4.4, page 46)
There is a risk of proxy interviews (i.e. another member of the household is answering on behalf of the missing person), thereby lowering the quality due to missing knowledge about the real trip behaviour.
The consequences of proxy reporting is often a substantial underestimation of mobility.
However:
for children under the age of 15, the assistance of a parent may be helpful
For elderly people and for people who do not speak the country language, the help from another household member may be very useful during the interview
Therefore, proxy interviews should be avoided, except for children under 15, elderly and persons not speaking the country’s language
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

24. Maximum number of trips to be described
In order to avoid a too long interview duration, a maximum number of trips description should be allowed.
This would also result in a better quality of the data collected.
However, if this number is set too low, the result will be an underestimation of mobility.
It seems reasonable to put the maximum to 15 trips.
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

25. Quota sampling (§4.3 page 42)
With a non-random sample (including quota), it is not known if the entire population is covered; this could lead to a bias in the results.
Random sampling allows the use of unequal probabilities; hence the over-sampling of certain categories of the population (in case this information is available in the sampling frame).
The Guidelines allow quota sampling when it is not possible to over-represent certain categories of the population in the sample with the sampling frame.
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

26. Questions received from Member States
“How to group transport vehicles categories for Taxi, vehicles by app – Uber, DriveNow, etc.?”
Uber (like a taxi with a personal driver) and DriveNow (without a personal driver) are not the same.
For Uber or similar taxi services: should be with “taxi”. Taking into account their current development, it could be interesting to identify these as a separate item….
For DriveNow, car2go and similar services: should be in: “Passenger car as driver” or “Passenger car as passenger”.
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

27. Questions received from Member States
“How to group transport vehicles categories for Vehicles by app – Mopeds and bicycles?”
For the Eurostat indicators:
All kind of bicycles should be in “Cycling”
All powered two-wheelers (electric or other) should be in “Motorcycle/moped”
However: countries are free to use a more detailed travel mode list; but the appropriate grouping should be performed for the Eurostat indicators.
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

28. Questions received from Member States
“How do we proceed to the calculation of “average distance per trip”?”
The ''average distance per trip'’ should be calculated as the weighted sum of all distances divided by the weighted sum of the total number of trips. 
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

29. Questions received from Member States
“How do we calculate the number of trips per day and per person?”
This figure should vary:
Sunday should be the day with the least trips,
then Saturday and then the weekdays.
Although theoretically possible, less than
1 trip per person per day
is very, very low.
The revised Guidelines will
include examples with
Applicable formulas….
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

30. Synthesis results SUMMARY
Additional guidelines on results calculations
Additional guidelines to avoid underestimations (soft refusal, missing trip home, etc….
More intensive cooperation with Eurostat during the conception/planning phase of the survey (especially for countries that have no experience in collecting such data)
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018

31. - Thank you for your attention -
TF Passenger Mobility 11 October 2018