Use of Smartphone Panels for Viable and Cost-Effective GPS Data Collection for Small and Medium Planning Agencies

Historically, small and medium-sized metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) have been at a disadvantage when investing in new technologies to aid in the collection of household travel data, primarily because of funding limitations. One such new technology is GPS data collection via smartphone, which provides benefits in data quality compared with traditional methods. While state and large metropolitan planning agencies have begun fielding household travel studies primarily using GPS data collection, smaller MPOs may be reluctant to incur the associated costs. However, improvements in mobile data collection, specifically use of personal smartphones, create opportunities for MPOs to benefit from GPS travel data collection without the expense of purchasing and deploying GPS devices. In 2016, Resource Systems Group conducted a household travel study on behalf of the North Carolina State University Institute for Transportation Research and Education, in which 4,194 households participated in a 1-day travel diary online or by phone. The household travel study was supplemented by a 351-household panel that completed a 3-day GPS study using a smartphone app in addition to the 1-day diary. In the smartphone panel, higher trip rates were found among young adults and high-income households compared with those collected in the online diary, demonstrating the advantages of passively collected trip data and near-real-time recall offered by the smartphone approach. This paper outlines the methodology of the smartphone panel effort, compares trip rates between the online diary and the smartphone panel, and briefly discusses the application of these results toward weighting the overall trip data set.