New app from U of T to gather key transit data

Researchers found landline survey exhibited age bias

University of Toronto researchers have launched an app designed to collect transit data that can be used by the provincial and local governments as they make transit planning and funding decisions.

The university has been conducting transit surveys every five years since 1986, as part of a project funded by the government and transit agencies.

Eric Miller, a professor of civil engineering and the principal investigator on the project, says that until now, the surveys have been conducted using landlines. But as more people use smartphones, Miller says trying to reach subjects by landline has become an issue, which is why the university is launching the free app, called City Logger. It was released Monday for Android and the iOS version will soon follow.

The idea is to capture transit users’ behaviour in granular detail. It will collect location and time data and will prompt users about the nature of their various trips, from commuting to work to trips to the grocery store to bicycle rides to walks.

“One real advantage is once the app is loaded, we can observe people day after day for a week or two,” Miller said. “You can identify patterns in people’s lives.”

Miller said the traditional survey required “an army of people” asking residents, in a home phone survey, where they travelled on a given day.

Muhammad Khan, a senior adviser at the province’s Ministry of Transportation, said the app attempts to address age bias in the traditional survey. He said they first noticed issues when cellphones became popular. “The data was becoming more biased toward older generations and that was the critical issue we identified,” Khan said.