GPS Travel Diaries in Rural Transportation Research

Abstract

Global Positioning System (GPS)-based travel diaries have emerged as valuable tools for urban transportation planning but have had little uptake in rural transportation planning. This chapter describes the methodology and effectiveness of employing vehicle-instrumented passive GPS units and participant-prompted recall with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in a rural travel diary study focused on understanding older driver travel behaviour. A convenience sample of 60 rural older drivers in New Brunswick, Canada participated for an average of 5.3 days. The GPS devices recorded 1649 “stops” of 1 minute or more, with 8% of all “stops” due to stoplights or traffic delay. Remaining “stops” were organized into 1494 trips (one origin with one destination), with participants supplying travel purposes and driver and passenger details for 99.1% of trips. An external battery for the GPS unit minimized satellite acquisition delay but was exhausted in 10% of cases. Results from the study permitted an exploratory analysis of the impact of select license restrictions on older drivers, the potential for rural older drivers to meet their needs without a car, and exposure analysis by road class.