The role of trend analysis in the evaluation of a TravelSmart program

摘要

The Victorian Department of Infrastructure, as part of its long-term commitment to the development of sustainable transportpolicies and strategies, has taken a lead role in the implementation of large-scale TravelSmart programs, the objectives of which are "to maximise sustainable travel and activity choices made by individuals, households and organizations through the utilisation of voluntary behaviour change tools". In 2004, the Department conducted a large-scale community TravelSmart project in the local government area of Darebin, in the inner north-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Approximately 30,000 households were contacted over several months in mid-2004, using the IndiMark technique. The Victorian 2004 TravelSmart project was subjected to a full independent evaluation using a variety of techniques. This paper describes the use of Trend Analysis of three types of data, which was used for two specific purposes. Firstly, the analysis was used to identify trends in traffic volumes and public transport usage at a broad scale to serve as control data for the evaluation. Secondly, the analysis was used to identify changes in traffic volumes and public transport usage in the area affected by the TravelSmart program. The three data sources used in the analysis were public transport ticket validations obtained from OneLink, public transport ticket sales obtained from MetLink and traffic volumes obtained from SCRAM traffic control sites from VicRoads. The paper will describe the opportunities and problems associated with using such data sources, and will outline the trends identified over an extended period from these three data sources. The use of these results in the evaluation of the TravelSmart program will then be highlighted.