Making Tracks, the 2015 Edmonton and Region Household Travel Survey is 76 percent of the way to reaching its goal of 19,000 completed surveys. The deadline is being extended to early December to give respondents more time to complete the survey.
“It’s been great to see Edmontonians respond to this very important one-day travel survey,” said Howaida Hassan, city of Edmonton project manager. “We’ve more than reached our target in areas such as the Downtown, University, Southgate and Bonnie Doon, although I’d love to see more surveys coming in from Edmonton’s Northeast and Londonderry areas.”
Response rates from rural areas of the Capital Region have been coming in more slowly, particularly from towns such as Calmar, Devon, Bon Accord, Mundare, Morinville, Redwater, Bruderheim and households outside of rural municipalities.
“I really encourage our rural residents to participate in the survey. The Capital Region is growing at a phenomenal rate as people make the move for quality of life reasons and to take advantage of economic opportunities,” said Neal Sarnecki, regional project manager for the Capital Region Board. “Capturing your trip and destination data now will allow us to plan for future regional transportation needs as these growth trends continue over the next 30 years.”
Citizens who have received an invitation letter are encouraged to register by calling the survey hotline or through the project website.
If households missed their travel day, they can be assigned a new one. Travel days will continue to be assigned until the first week of December, with survey data collection ending the following week.
Making Tracks has also reached its goals for the GPS study; a technological innovation for household travel studies. 2700 people downloaded the app on their smartphone device which will help verify and better understand the received travel survey data.
This one-day travel survey is a project of the City of Edmonton in cooperation with Alberta Transportation and the Capital Region Board.
The region undertakes a household travel survey once every 10 years, most recently in 2005 and 1994. Data from the 2005 Household Travel survey helped inform planning for LRT expansion, the construction of Anthony Henday Drive and to develop a plan to upgrade Yellowhead Trail to a freeway.
Metropolitan Council
