ACT HTS - 02 Purpose of Travel (2022)

This spreadsheet replicates selected data tables from the ACT &amp; Queanbeyan Household Travel Survey dashboard.
Please refer to the attached spreadsheet on this page.

About the Purpose of Travel theme
The theme provides an estimate of the number and type of activities visited on an average weekday by the residents of the ACT and Queanbeyan.

IMPORTANT: Travel activity is typically analysed using 'Primary Purpose' as the default measure.



A 'primary purpose' of travel is reported for each place visited on a participant's survey day. 

By exception, just for travel returning home, the primary purpose of the trip is generated using the previous activity visited. For example, consider someone who has just two trips on their travel day: driving to work, and later driving home. In this instance, both trips are coded as 'work related'. Conceptually, the work activity generated two trips: from home, and back again. Without the work activity, no travel would have been recorded for that participant.


The primary purpose adjustment applied to home trips provides additional information on why people are travelling. However, the exact purpose of travel can still be viewed on the 'Detailed Purpose' tabs.



Under the 'detailed purpose' definition, trips that go home are not recategorised; they are stored directly as 'Go home'.

Using the earlier example, someone driving to work and then driving home will be recorded as having one 'work trip' and one 'home trip'. 

While this literal interpretation of travel can be useful, some of the broader context of why people are moving around the network is lost. This is most apparent in the PM peak, where almost 60 per cent of travel is assigned to trips 'going home' without a clear view of where they were actually travelling from.


The selection of the purpose definition - primary or detailed - will ultimately depend on the questions being asked of the data. Primary Purpose allows analysts to understand the reasons that different cohorts travel. Detailed Purpose is a more straightforward description of travel that does not require further explanation.  

Source data
The data shown is not a Census of travel, but a large survey of several thousand households from across the ACT and Queanbeyan. As with any survey there will be some variability in the accuracy of the results, and how well they reflect the movement of the entire population. For instance, if the survey were to be completed on another day, or with a different subset of households, the results would be slightly different. 
Interpretations of the data should keep this variability in mind: these are estimates of the broad shape of travel only. Even for the same person, travel behaviour will vary according to many factors: day of week, month of year, season, weather, school holidays, illness, family responsibilities, work from home opportunities, etc. Again, by summarising the travel of many different people, the data provides a view of average weekday patterns.

In interpreting the data, it is worth noting the following points:
-    A zero cell does not necessarily mean the travel is never made, but rather that the survey participants did not make this travel on their particular survey day.
-    Values are rounded, and may not sum to the totals shown.
Trip time periods are assigned using the mid point of travel:
-   AM peak (8am to 9am), PM peak (5pm to 6pm), Interpeak (9am to 5pm), Off-peak (after 6pm)

The survey is described on the Transport Canberra and City Services' website:
[Household Travel Survey homepage]

Cell annotations and notes
Some cells have annotations added to them, as follows:
*    : Statistically significant difference across survey years (at the 95% confidence level). Confidence intervals indicate where the true measure would typically fall if the survey were repeated mult

Tags: act-household-travel-survey
Organization: ACT Government Open Data