New Zealanders’ travel patterns: trends in trip chaining and tours

In 2008, we reformulated the 2004-07 Ongoing New Zealand Household Travel Survey trips dataset into trip chains and tours. We based this on our previous reformulation of the 1997/98 New Zealand Household Travel Survey dataset. Trip chains and tours are combinations of the basic unit of these surveys, the trip leg. For example, if I drive home from work but stop briefly twice (e.g., to get a newspaper, and later to pick up children), that travel comprises three trip legs but only one trip chain. Using the reformulated datasets, we made comparisons between New Zealanders’ travel patterns in 1997/98 and the four-year period of 2004-07 and commented on the emergence of some trends in New Zealand travel behaviour. (a) For the covering record of the conference, please refer to ITRD no. E218380.