Understanding travel behaviour in Cape Town through investigating the application of alternative data sources

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.