The regional travel survey

A regional travel survey (RTS) provides data on travel practices of the resident population of the regiom Mobility is measured through all the trips made the day before the interview, for all means of transport used. A trip is defined as going from one place to another, where an activity is performed (round trips are split into two one-way trips). For each trip, the following data are collected means of transport used, origin and destination locations of the trip and times of departure and arrival. Distance is a posteriori estimated from an origin-destination matrix. 

The most recent RTS in the Rhone County was carried out between November 2005 and April 2006, on weekdays, outside school and public holidays. Three exposure measures were estimated number of trips, distance traveled and hme spent traveling. In the results, we favor number of hours spent traveling. The first reason is that time-budget is less elastic than distance-budget time spent traveling of a day is quite similar between road users, whatever the type whereas distance traveled on a day varies more by type of road user. We hence believe that time spent traveling makes comparisons more relevant. The second reason is that it ahows us to compare with injury risk of other activities (e g. sport and DIY). 

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