THE TRIPOLI HOME-INTERVIEW HOUSEHOLD AND TRAVEL SURVEY, 1977 (1) AN EXAMPLE OF THE USE OF MACHINE-READABLE SURVEY FORMS IN TRANSPORT PLANNING

This is the first of two papers which describes some of the main features of a home-interview survey carried out in the Libyan capital of Tripoli. Tripoli, a captial city, has a population which has increased from 240000 in 1954 to 709000 in 1974; the number of registered vehicles has increased from 15000 in 1966 to 143000 in 1976; and the number of private cars by the end of 1977 had almost passed the 130000 mark. This first paper is concerned with various technical aspects of the organization and execution of the survey, which it was intended should provide, for the first time, a relatively detailed picture of the scale and nature of travel behaviour of the population of tripoli. The design of the questionnaire form is illustrated and described, based on the need to obtain information related to household characteristics, the characteristics of individual members of the households, and details of the trips undertaken by these individuals. Opscan (optical scanning) machine-readable survey forms were used in conjunction with facilities introduced by the University of Liverpool Computer Laboratory, and the use of these forms whereby data can be read directly from the forms is described. A total of 3256 usable household interviews, representing a success rate of 65.4 per cent was obtained from 4992 households, approximately 5 per cent of the households in the city. /TRRL/