Should modal-share be included as key data-set in Open Data Census?

[wolfmat]

I've suggested on the mailing list to consider Modal Share as a key data set to include in city-level census, and was invited by Christian Villum to open the issue here.

What is modal-share?

A modal share (also called mode split, mode-share, or modal split) is the percentage of travelers using a particular type of transportation or number of trips using said type. Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share

Why consider it a key data-set?

Modal-share is arguably the single most important indicator for monitoring public policy around urban mobility: it informs us how people are moving in a city at the present. It is used to set targets towards more balanced, sustainable modes of transport. As such, it is a key data set towards designing people-centered mobility services and infraestructure in cities.

Why include it in the Open Data Census?

This data set is at the center of the debate of how we want to move in our cities in the future, and including it in the Open Data Census would be a big step forward in making the data more available, transparent and engaging everywhere.

Is the data available? Is it Open?

Yes and no. Here is a breakdown by regions of where the data is available, and if not available, where we could start looking for it:

North American cities

• United States: American Community Survey includes mode-share as part of it's on-going surveys.
• Link to ACS portal: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/.
• Article featuring mode-share tabbed data and analysis using ACS data: http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/10/13/transit-mode-share-trends-looking-steady-rail-appears-to-encourage-non-automobile-commutes/
• Canada > No info yet, will keep looking.

  European cities

• The European Platform on Mobility Management offers a modal-share tool called "TEMS"
• Link http://www.epomm.eu/tems/index.phtml
• It presents the modal-share of 350 cities (12 non-european).
• The data is there. Not open, but available for consultation.
• Perhaps the Census is a fantastic opportunity to open this data
• "Cities" can upload their own data for review and inclusion. The upload for includes the following fields: Country, City, Year, Population, Source, Survey Method - wich means that fantastic metadata is available for each modal-share as well.
• EU's Urban Audit also included modal-share in their perception survey.
• For example, results of 2009 are in this excel doc http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/studies/pdf/urban/survey2009_annex.xls

  Latin America, Asia and Afica

• Here it gets a bit trickier, but perhaps there is a work-around: ITDP http://itdp.org and WRI's EMBARQ http://www.embarq.org are both large organizations working on sustainable transport in developing economies. If this data exists they either have it or know where it is. Again, the census can be a good motivation to find and eventually open this data

  Australia and New Zeland

• No info yet, will keep looking

[rufuspollock]

FIXED. We added this suggestion to the questions spreadsheet

[wolfmat]

cool!

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 10:15 AM, Rufus Pollock notifications@github.comwrote:

Closed #98 https://github.com/okfn/opendatacensus/issues/98.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/okfn/opendatacensus/issues/98 .