CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

14-18 November 2011. Termas de Puyehue, Chile

National Park Sanctuary and Biosphere Reserve, Andean Lake District, Southern Chile

Co-Chairs: Johanna Zmud, Martin Lee-Gosselin

We have great pleasure in inviting you to the 9th International Conference on Transport Survey
Methods to be held in a magnificent World Heritage natural site in the southern part of Chile.
Since 1979, survey experts, transport researchers, and practitioners have been coming together to
improve the conduct of surveys that support transport planning, policy, modeling, monitoring, and
related issues for urban, regional, intercity, and international person, vehicle, and commodity
movements. The International Steering Committee for Travel Survey Conferences organizes these
conferences with the aim of offering transport professionals (researchers, practitioners, mode-
lers, planners, and others) the possibility to present their work, exchange information, network,
promote international collaboration, and serve as a forum for the presentation of workshops,
papers, and posters. This time the conference will place particular emphasis on the challen-
ges of the near and medium term future to the design of transport surveys. Rapidly evol-
ving problems and policy contexts are compelling us to advance the state-of-the-art of methods,
tools, strategies and protocols, while assuring the stability and coherence of the very data from
which trends can be tracked and understood.

SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS

Abstracts on any aspect of transport survey methods are eligible, but we particularly encourage
those that address priority topics in contemporary policy and planning contexts (see lists of both
below). Long abstracts of 1000 words are required, and should include full contact information
for the corresponding author. As the majority of the time during the conference will be devoted
to workshops, accepted papers will mostly be presented in formal poster sessions.

Submit your abstract in English by 14 November 2010 via webpage www.isctsc.cl.

Authors will be notified of abstract acceptance by 31 January 2011.
Full papers will be due 14 September 2011.

International Steering Committee

Organized by: for Travel Survey Conferences in collaboration with:
 PRIORITY TOPICS

Methodological challenges under pressure from evolving issues, including but not limited to the following:

New total design strategies

◊ Use of multiple methods, especially recent developments in panel, email/web, technological aids and complementary data

Sampling strategies: dealing with complexity, size and inefficiency

◊ Use of choice based samples – pros and cons
◊ Designing samples for a metro areas the size of Beijing, Shanghai, Mexico City

Rapid developments in survey technology

◊ Replacing travel diaries by GPS (or other technologies) – pros and cons
◊ Advances in automatic identification of travel and activity characteristics
◊ Non-response challenges in technology-aided surveys

Improving Stated Response surveys

◊ Observer and instrument effects, especially in politically sensitive domains
◊ Incorporating objective variables in the definition of latent variables in models

Measurement Issues in evolving activity and social network patterns

◊ Main measure of travel – trips vs. tours vs. days; travel time vs. travel distance
◊ Unit of analysis – households or persons
◊ Burden challenges in capturing valid and detailed multi-modal trip stages
◊ Capturing travel day information in onboard transit surveys
◊ Integration of cybertravel

Developments in response bias – how best to measure and correct for it:
◊ Threats to data sources used to evaluate and correct for unit non-responses
◊ Non-reported travel – how significant? Is it more than a marginal effect?
◊ How to account for biases associated with secondary data when using to compare with household surveys
◊ Impact of Item non-response on model building

New approaches to post-processing of data

◊ Weighting to make complex samples representative
◊ Imputing values for missing variables (especially when a whole set of correlated variables are missing)

When possible, submitted papers should address the above transport survey methods issues in the context of rapidly
evolving challenges, whether in lower income countries or higher income countries, such as the following examples:

Rethinking and defending the metropolitan scale mobility survey – what are today’s fundamental cross-section and
longitudinal data needs?

Encouraging and paying for research innovation in travel surveys given tight budgets with little allowance for
experimentation and monitoring of outcomes

Accelerating the introduction of low-emissions vehicles

Reorganizing public transit

Estimating expected revenues from new priced capacity based on demand

Introducing traffic restraint such as congestion charging

Measuring reactions to increasing fuel price, with growing volatility, and implications in terms of taxation and containment
policies linked to the vulnerability of households to the economic crisis (links between housing and transport)

Environmental impact (C02 emission) of people's activity and travel at particular city areas to develop environmental policy

Weekend excursions by private vehicles to determine the pricing of highway networks.

Further information: www.isctsc.cl info@isctsc.cl