Abstract

Travel surveys are broadly used in travel behavior research. Evolutions in data collection and modeling strategies have provided important improvements over time including the development of activity-based travel models. But in most travel surveys, what occurs between trips remains largely undocumented. In the context of increasing participation in virtual activities, time use surveys provide complementary information that can help assess activity and trip substitution.

In this presentation, we explore six useful qualities of time use data that complement what can be achieved using travel surveys. Past and current research using the Canadian General Social Survey’s time use modules as well as other similar surveys are presented to provide examples of use of these qualities and the policy implications of such research.

These qualities include (1) More detailed categories of destinations and possibility to combine activity and location codes; (2) Ability to classify individuals based on diary-derived lifestyle characteristics rather than mere socio-demographic characteristics; (3) Actual accounts of activity substitution within a study period; (4) Greater harmonization efforts that can lead to cross national policy comparison; (5) Data rich context environment with respect to lifestyles; and (6) broader territorial coverage than metropolitan travel surveys.

Projects on telework, grocery shopping behavior, trip substitution by online activities, walking and transit use as well as the implications of growing single person households in Canada will provide case examples of these features.

The presentation will also cover characteristics of time use surveys that create limitations for travel research and will point to untapped opportunities for greater use of time use surveys in travel research.

Biography

Ugo Lachapelle is currently a full professor of mobility and sustainable development in the Department of Urban Studies and Tourism at the University of Québec in Montréal. He obtained his PhD in Planning from the University of British Columbia in 2010.

His research has since focused on individual, policy and infrastructure-related factors associated with travel reduction and mode shifts. His work is both qualitative and quantitative, and uses both existing data sets and Ad hoc data collections. His most recent work is focused on technological developments that have the potential to impact travel behaviour by improving, avoiding or transferring trips to more sustainable modes. This includes online shopping, remote work, micromobility and parcel collection systems.

To conduct this research program, he has developed an expertise in time use surveys over the last decade and contributed to the community of time use researchers in the area of personal urban transport. In 2023, he became the president of the International Association for Time Use Research (IATUR).

He has personally received and has been involved in multiple grants from the major Quebec and Canadian Social Sciences and Health research councils and has worked for or in collaboration with public transit agencies, cities, the ministry of Finance and the ministry of Sustainable Mobility of Québec. During his 2017 sabbatical, he was a fellow of the Australian Government’s Endeavour Leadership Program.