The Role of Trend Analysis in the Evaluation of a TravelSmart Program

In 2004, the Victorian Department of Infrastructure conducted a large-scale community TravelSmart project in the local government area of Darebin, in the inner north-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Approximately 30,000 households were contacted over several months inmid-2004, using the IndiMark technique. The Victorian 2004 TravelSmart project was subjected to a full independent evaluation using a variety of techniques. This paper describes the use of Trend Analysis of three types of data, which was used for two specific purposes. Firstly, the analysis was used to identify trends in traffic volumes and public transport usage at a broad scale to serve as control data for the evaluation. Secondly, the analysis was used to identify changes in traffic volumes and public transport usage in the area affected by the TravelSmart program. The three data sources used in the analysis were public transport ticket validations obtained from OneLink, public transport ticket sales obtained from MetLink and traffic volumes obtained from SCRAM traffic control sites from VicRoads. The paper will describe the opportunities and problems associated with using such data sources and the use of the results in the evaluation of the TravelSmart program will then be highlighted. (a)