Creating rail and public transport statistics from online travel planner data

ongoing

Statistics describing public transport in Norway is covered by two different statistical products, the railway statistics and the public transport statistics. The railway statistics covers both passenger and freight transport and is produced in line with Regulation (EU) 2018/643 of the European Parliament and of the Council. The public transport statistics covers all scheduled public transport by bus, boat, rail, tram and metro. Information is collected by use of web-forms distributed to operators and public transport administrative bodies of each county. While we experience challenges in our data collection, we see that there are other data sources that could be utilised for making rail and public transport statistics. Entur is a company owned by the Ministry of Transport that collects and makes available route and travel data for all public transport in Norway. For public transport users, Entur offers a national travel planner with updated travel suggestions for all public transport journeys in Norway. Entur also makes travel data standardised and easily integrable and collects and disseminates public transport data in one place. The objective of the project is to identify how online travel planner data can be used in the production of transport statistics and to perform pilot data collections with the aim of introducing such data as a permanent data source for future rail and public transport statistics. The project addresses activity 4 “Develop transport statistics indicators using new and innovative data sources”. New “big data” sources reducing the need to perform traditional surveys are important for reducing cost of data collection, reducing reporting burden, help assess the quality of statistical data and help better monitor transport patterns. The planned testing and use of Entur data for rail and public transport statistics is in line with the call’s expected outcomes related to use of non-traditional data sources and techniques.