Exploratory Analysis of a Smartphone-Based Travel Survey in Singapore

Future Mobility Sensing (FMS) is an innovative smartphone-based travel survey that was field-tested in 2012 and 2013, together with the Household Interview Travel Survey (HITS), in Singapore. This paper presents the findings of an exploratory analysis of the data collected in this test. The clustering of the day patterns from the FMS data revealed a large day-to-day variability of user behavior that could not be captured by a snapshot with a 1-day survey. Even the high cross-sectional variability from the larger sample size of a traditional survey would not have achieved the comprehensive set of heterogeneous patterns provided by FMS. Some common problems in traditional surveys—such as the underreporting of trips, the overestimation of travel times, and the inaccuracy of locations and times—can apparently be reduced by FMS. The FMS data have higher resolution and better accuracy compared with the HITS data. In addition, FMS is well suited to the collection of multiday data because additional costs are marginal and the user burden decreases over time. FMS offers a promising technology for the next generation of travel data collection.