Abstract:
The City of Cape Town previously developed and continuously updates a transport model
to predict future demand on the transport system in Cape Town and to inform long-term
decision-making about the road and public transport network. As part of maintaining and
updating the transport model, the City of Cape Town must collect transport data on travel
behaviour regularly.
In the past, undertaking household travel surveys was an important source of information
on people's travel behaviour in Cape Town. In an environment where people are hesitant
to participate in surveys due to health risks associated with the Covid 19 pandemic and
security concerns, an alternative approach to collecting the required information was
investigated.
With advancements in technology, data sources have become available that have
traditionally not been used in understanding people's travel behaviour in Cape Town. This
offered an alternative approach to collecting travel behaviour information, but the
limitations of the available data source had to be investigated, understood, and tested
before it could be used to provide information on travel behaviour.
This paper aims to report on the investigation into the use of the various data sources
available to the City of Cape Town, its application in collecting travel behaviour information,
and its limitations. The data sources investigated include on-board vehicle surveys (bus
and minibus taxis), ticket information, personal transport interviews, probe data and cell
phone data.
