The State of National Travel Surveys: Design Characteristics, Impact of the Pandemic and the Move to New Technologies

National Travel Surveys (NTS) are essential statistical tools for planners, researchers and policy makers, providing important insights into travel behavior across countries. This study provides a comprehensive overview of NTS design and implementation in countries on five different continents, focusing on the most recent surveys conducted in OECD member countries, candidate countries or major partner countries. Of the 49 countries surveyed, surveys that could be classified as NTS were identified in 23 countries. Sufficient documentation was available for 22 of the surveys included in the analysis. The paper compares various design features of NTS, including general survey design, recruitment and data collection methods, and travel diary elements. While there is an ongoing shift towards web-based data collection, other methods such as face-to-face and telephone interviews remain prevalent. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic led to adjustments in survey periods, postponements or changes in data collection methods in several countries. The uptake of GPS or smartphone-based tracking technologies in the NTS is still limited. This study provides an up-to-date overview of the design characteristics of NTSs and addresses difficulties in the way survey materials, such as methodological reports, are written and presented. Greater transparency and standardization in the reporting of methodologies, as well as the documentation of shortcomings, would benefit researchers and could help to improve survey quality in the future.