Use of Travel Behaviour Surveys for the Prague Transport Model

By project InnovaSUMP

Published on 06 November 2018

Czech Republic

Jihovýchod

About this good practice

The paper presents the transport model of the City of Prague used by Technical Administration of Road of the City of Prague (TSK) and travel behaviour and traffic surveys that are purchased for the transport model. The surveys are carried out repeatedly in different time cycle. The main travel behaviour surveys are carried out every five years. The outputs enter into the transport model made in the software PTV Visum. The model is used for many tasks in the transport planning in the City of Prague and in adjacent areas of the Central Bohemian Region. TSK in cooperation with Prague Institute of Planning and Development performs, inter alia, transport forecasts for almost all infrastructure projects in public and road transport.
The results of the travel behaviour surveys are also important for describing the current state of demand in passenger transport in Prague and its surroundings. Thanks to the regular repetition of these surveys we can also observe changes in the travel behaviour over time.

Expert opinion

Evidence-based policy-making in the area of transport policy requires representative and continuously collected data sets.
The collection of data from 5000 travelers over time provides such data sets.
Good points:
- repetitive collection of data allows identification of change patterns and trends
- integrated data collection across regions (Prague region and the surrounding Central Bohemia region that sits like a donut around Prague) allows seeing the bigger picture including commuting movements
- linking data to a modeling software

Katharina Krell

Works at Interreg Europe Policy Learning Platform

Resources needed

One travel behaviour survey of 5000 respondents (typical sample size in Prague) costs approximately 1.5 mil to 2 mil CZK.

Evidence of success

We have regularly updated data on the travel behaviour of the population of the City of Prague and of the adjacent areas of the Central Bohemian Region. These data are at the level of detail comparable with other countries of the European Union such as Germany of France.

Potential for learning or transfer

We present travel behaviour modelling as a data source for transport model representing area with approximately 2 million inhabitants. We provide continuous support for transport planning in this area. Thanks to this we gained many experiences in the field of transport planning and transport demand modelling.