Travel Plan

Last Thursday we completed our research between 12:30 and 1:30. During this time we split our group into two halves, one completed the traffic count standing at the barrier and the other stood outside the Senate building asking for people to fill in questionnaires.

The data collection at the barrier was quite easy to collect as all the cars had to stop at the barrier so it was easy to count the number of people in each car. The results were quite variable throughout the hour with the majority of cars appearing in the first half an hour and only having one person in them. We didn't find it too surprising how many people travelled alone compared to those who had car occupants.

The questionnaire collection was quite hard as people weren't keen to stop no matter how polite we were. Also because of the time of day and the weather there were not many people around to ask. We were quite surprised by the number of people who lived more than 15miles away and commuted daily. Often these people travelled alone with no other car occupants. Also not many people were concerned about their effects upon the environment.

If we were to carry out this sort of research again we would choose a better time of the day, where there would be more people about to question, such as morning rush hour. It would also have been good to cover more days so as to get a more representative view of the weeks car useage.

By Cat and Emma M