Instead of wasting limited financial and personnel resources on traditional data collection survey methods, which can lack accuracy in terms of travel distances by mode, we wanted to focus on more important parts of the research, especially measuring travel over a longer time period, and have a core and valuable interaction asset with our participants.
The technology of measuring travel and traffic was not entirely new to us. However, the natural experiment of the 9-Euro-Ticket and fuel excise tax cut and later the Deutschlandticket meant a rather unusual long observation period for our field, for which existing survey tools are not really designed. Here, smartphone-based travel diaries like the MOTIONTAG app simplify data collection at this time scale and scale much better, making it possible to examine a larger group of people reliably.
