Transportation Tomorrow

Questions being asked?

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Who is sponsoring this survey?

The survey is funded by the Ministry of Transportation Ontario as well as your local governments. A total of 23 local, regional, provincial and transit operating agencies are involved in this survey. To see a full list of those involved go here.

What will be done with the data collected from this survey?

The data will be summarized to establish a common, centrally-accessible database containing information on transportation activities, zone systems, transportation networks and land use activity. This data will be used to further the improvement of transportation demand analysis, research, and forecasting in the survey area.

Will the information from the survey be available to the public?

The travel information collected from the participating households in the region will be summarized to describe how, why, where and when people travel. These summaries will be available but no individual household information is available. Results of the 2006 Transportation Tomorrow Survey can be viewed for various regions on our website. Various technical aspects of the 2001 and 2006 Transportation Tomorrow Surveys are also available on our website here and can be viewed with Acrobat Reader.

Where did you get my information from?

The household addresses and telephone numbers were obtained from a publicly available telephone listing. A random sample of households in the area to be surveyed was selected from this listing and sent pre-interview letters.

Who will be surveyed?

The survey has evolved over the years to include a significant portion of southern Ontario. A map of the survey area is shown here

Households will be selected for the survey at random from a survey area that includes the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), the Regional Municipalities of Niagara and Waterloo, the counties of Brant, Dufferin. Peterborough, Simcoe and Wellington, the Cities of Barrie, Brantford, Guelph, Kawartha Lakes, Orillia and Peterborough and the Town of Orangeville.

Is the survey mandatory?

While the survey is not mandatory, the information gathered from each household is extremely important to our study. For this reason, individuals selected for the survey are encouraged to voluntarily participate in the study.

What if I don't feel comfortable answering some of the questions?

The Transportation Tomorrow Survey team is dedicated to protecting the privacy of it participants. Any personal identifiers collected are destroyed at the end of the survey's data collection phase. The data collected is then aggregated and no personal data that can be traced back to you or your individual household will ever be released.

View the Privacy Statement at the bottom of the page.

What if I don't drive a car?

The Transportation Tomorrow Survey concerns trips made by individuals who use many different modes of travel. Different methods of travel such as walking, bicycling, and taking various forms of transit are equally important to our survey and provide us with extremely important data.

What is expected of me and my household?

The survey requires one participant to provide data concerning the household and the trips made by each member of the household. Our survey requires information regarding the type of household, the number of vehicles available for personal use, the ages of the residents of the household, the trips each person made, the reasons for these trips, etc. We will only be collecting trip data for persons 11 years of age or older.

What is meant by a "trip"?

A trip is a one-way journey from one location to another made by any form of motorized transportation, bicycle or walking.

What is the travel period?

We are interested in the trips made within a 24 hour time period between 4:00 a.m. and 3:59 a.m. the following day. For example, if the survey was conducted on Wednesday September 21st, we would record data about the trips made between 4:00 a.m. on Tuesday September 20th and 3:59 a.m. on Wednesday September 21st

How much detail is needed on each place I visit?

The following represents the amount of detail required on each trip for the purposes of our survey:

• From origin location to which destination location (street address preferred )
• Reason for making the trip (e.g. shopping, work)
• Start time of the trip
• Type of transportation (bus, car, bicycle, etc.)

Why do you want to know about my activities?

This is a factual survey that collects information on how members of a household use the transportation system. An understanding of urban travel results in better decisions on road and transit improvements, both now and in the future.