Data on travel behaviour

The data on travel behaviour in Beijing come from two field surveys: a large government-administered survey on people’s 24-hour travel records and a small questionnaire survey on the decision making in daily travel conducted by myself.

The travel diary survey was conducted by the transport branch of the municipal government in 2010, as part of a series of large travel diary surveys in Beijing that have been conducted successively in 1986, 2000, 2005 and 2010. The survey area was the whole city, but a larger sampling weight was assigned to the central city according to

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the population density. The sample size was approximately 47,000 households containing around 116,000 individuals, which corresponds to a sampling rate of 1.5% of the total population. Both registered, long-term residents and unregistered migrants were included in the survey. The interviewees were selected using systematic sampling. The survey took the form of face-to-face survey that was fully administrated by interviewers, who read the questions to respondents and recorded the answers. It was required that all household members should be present so that the travel of the entire household can be recorded. The day of survey was evenly distributed from Monday to Sunday. The sampling was carefully controlled so that the samples collected on each day were spatially evenly distributed.

The spatial unit of the travel record is the Transport Analysis Zones (TAZ), which means that all the trip origins and destinations were recorded in TAZs instead of the exact coordinates. The whole city is divided into 1,911 TAZs by the transport authority. 652 of them are in the study area. The sizes of the TAZs are generally smaller in the city centre and larger in the inner and outer suburbs, which range a lot from 0.13 square kilometres (sqkm) to 382.03 sqkm. The variance in the sizes of the TAZs is much smaller in the study area, from 0.13 sqkm to 5.25 sqkm. The TAZs are delineated based on the following principles:

- They do not conflict with administrative boundaries.

- They are neither too big so that the traffic OD matrix can be generated in a high spatial resolution, nor too small so that there will not be too much random error. - They are smaller where the density is high and the road network is dense (in the city

centre) and larger where the density is low and the road network is sparse (in the suburbs).

- They do not extend across ‘natural boundaries’ such as rivers, railways. - They do not extend across main roads and express ways.

- Special zones are delineated into separate TAZs such as the rail stations, large parks, and tourist sites.

60 Figure 3-2 TAZs in the whole city and the study area

Figure 3-3 Spatial distribution of samples

The following information is recorded in the survey:

Demographic and socioeconomic information (household-level) - Home location (in the unit of TAZ);

- Vehicle ownership, including car, motorcycle, bicycle, electric bicycle;

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from self-owned, owned by a state-owned enterprise, rented, borrowed and others; - Building type of the apartment/house that the interviewees are living in, choose from apartment, informal apartment, detached or semi-detached house and courtyard houses;

- Type of the apartment/house that the interviewees are living in, choose from commercial housing, houses built up by state-owned enterprises, affordable housing and others;

- Floor area of the apartment/house that the interviewees are living in; - Household annual income.

Demographic and socioeconomic information (individual-level) - Gender;

- Age;

- Residential registration status1_;

- Employment status, choose from full-time worker, part-time worker, full-time student, part-time student, pre-school child, retired, unemployed and others; - Level of education, choose from pre-school, primary school, junior school, high

school, technical school, bachelor and master and above.

Travel diary

- The start time of each trip in the day; - The end time of each trip in the day;

- The origin of each trip in the day (in the unit of TAZ); - The destination of each trip in the day (in the unit of TAZ);

- The purpose of each trip in the day, choose from sleeping, dining out, working, doing business, studying, personal business, housework, entertainment/sports,

1 _{China imposes a residential registration system, in which each individual is officially registered to a place to}

live. If an individual migrates to a place where he/she is not registered at, he/she may not have access to a same level of public service or other rights as registered residents.

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shopping, meeting friends, dropping off/picking up people, escorting people, dropping off/picking up goods;

- The travel mode of each trip in the day, choose from on foot, by car, by freight car, by motorcycle, by subway, by bus, by taxi, by shuttle bus, by school bus, by illegal taxi, by bicycle, by electric bicycle and others.

Table 3-1 Summary of the interviewees

Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics Distribution Household-level Car ownership 29.0% Motorcycle ownership 3% Bicycle ownership 63.0%

Electric bicycle ownership 14.0% Property right of the apartment/house

that the interviewees are living in

Self-owned: 68.9%

Owned by a state-owned enterprise: 12.8% Rented: 16.1%

Borrowed: 1.6% Others: 0.6% Building type of the apartment/house

that the interviewees are living in

Apartment: 84.4% Informal apartment: 2.4%

Detached or semi-detached house: 0.2% Courtyard houses: 13.0%

Type of the apartment/house that the interviewees are living in

Commercial housing: 30.4%

Houses built up by state-owned enterprises: 39.1% Affordable housing: 4.7%

Others: 25.8% Floor area of the apartment/house

that the interviewees are living in

<50: 21.8% 50-75: 40.3% 75-100: 22.0% >100: 15.9%

Household annual income <50 thousand RMB: 65.0% 50-100 thousand RMB: 27.6% 100-150 thousand RMB: 5.0% 150-200 thousand RMB: 1.4% 200-250 thousand RMB: 0.5% 250-300 thousand RMB: 0.2% >300 thousand RMB: 0.3% Individual-level Gender Male: 47.9%

63 Female: 52.1% Age <=18: 10.7% 19-40: 33.6% 41-60: 35.4% >60: 20.3%

Residential registration status Registered in the same district of the current residence in Beijing: 72.3%

Registered in another district in Beijing: 10.1% Registered in another place in China: 17.4% Foreigner: 0.1%

Others: 0.1%

Employment status Full-time worker: 45.9% Part-time worker: 1.6% Full-time student: 7.3% Part-time student: 0.2% Pre-school child: 3.9% Retired: 29.0% Unemployed: 8.3% Others: 3.8% Level of education Pre-school: 3.9%

Primary school: 10.1% Junior school: 21.6% High school: 18.1% Technical school: 23.2% Bachelor: 17.6%

Master and above: 3.5% No education: 2.0%

It should be noted that although the face-to-face and interviewer-administered survey is advantageous in terms of the response rate and the correctness of the contents, it could also induce systematic errors. The most common error is that interviewees might get impatient and under report deliberately, which could result in an underestimation of the total amount of travel, especially short non-motorised trips (Kockelman, 1997). Besides, since only a one-day record was taken, occasional trips, which may happen on a weekly or monthly basis, are likely to be undersampled (Kockelman, 1997). These systematic errors are difficult to be rectified.

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purpose of this survey was to collect information on the process of the decision making related to daily activity participation and travel. The sample size was two hundred individuals randomly drawn from eight residence compounds, twenty-five interviewees in each. The residence compounds were selected at both the city centre and the city fringe and covered a housing price range from 24,000 RMB per square metre to 88,000 RMB per square metre when the survey was conducted, as shown in Figure 3-4 and

Table 3-2. The sampling of the interviewees aimed to approximate the travel diary

survey as well as possible. For this purpose, the distributions of gender, age and household type were controlled to be consistent with the travel diary survey, as shown in Table 3-3.

Figure 3-4 Locations of the selected residences in the small survey

Table 3-2 Housing prices of the selected residences in the small survey

Residence Average Price

(RMB per square metre)

Guanghuaxuan 40,000 Qianmachang Hutong 88,000 Nanzhugan Hutong 48,000 Fangqunyuan 39,000 Xinzhaoyayuan 37,000 Guanyinjingyuan 24,000 Fuhuajiayuan 26,000

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Huizhongbeili 39,000

Table 3-3 Demographic characteristics of the interviewees in the small survey

Characteristics Proportion% Gender Female 50 Male 50 Sum 100 Age 19-40 23 41-60 38 60+ 39 Sum 100 Household type Single 12 Couple 34 Core family 32 Others 22 Sum 100

The questionnaire included two parts: basic information and the information on travel decision making. The former included gender, age, household type, car ownership, residential registration status, employment status and the level of education. The latter was composed of four questions as listed below:

- What is your first consideration, when you make plans about your activities (except work) on weekdays? Choose from ‘what shall I do today’, ‘when shall I go’, ‘shall I go by car/subway/bus/walk/..’, ‘where shall I go’ and ‘how far shall I go’.

What is your second consideration, if you could specify. What is your third consideration, if you could specify.

- What is your first consideration, when you make plans about your activities (except work) on weekends? Choose from ‘what shall I do today’, ‘when shall I go’, ‘shall I go by car/subway/bus/walk/..’, ‘where shall I go’ and ‘how far shall I go’.

What is your second consideration, if you could specify. What is your third consideration, if you could specify.

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Choose from ‘decide all destinations together’ and ‘first decide long-stay/primary destinations and then short-stay/intermediate stops’.

- When deciding about the activity destinations on weekends, which do you prefer? Choose from ‘decide all destinations together’ and ‘first decide long-stay/primary destinations and then short-stay/intermediate stops’.