Twin Cities Travel Behavior Inventory/Transit Onboard Survey Pilot

The 2021 Travel Behavior Inventory/Transit Onboard Survey Pilot supported the development and analysis of the regional transit system in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota.

The primary purpose of the pilot survey was to assess the survey instrument (questionnaire) and provide up-to-date information about bus and light-rail transit ridership during the COVID-19 era. At the time of the survey, many pandemic interventions were in place (municipal masking orders, closed in-person offices) while others had been altered (schools and universities were holding in-person classes).

Transit Agency

ETC Institute conducted the survey for the Metropolitan Council.

Survey Methodology

The survey was conducted in English in Sept. 14–Nov. 20, 2021. It included two light-rail lines (METRO Green and Blue light rail) and the 10 busiest bus routes (METRO A and C bus rapid transit and local routes 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 18, 19, and 21) in the Twin Cities region.

Participants provided information about demographics, trip purpose, car access, and employment status.

Survey Records, Data, and Documentation

Survey records include 4,321 participants.

Note, the zipped download file contains three datasets:

• On-to-off survey data – Includes boarding and alighting locations for a sample of trips; used for constructing stop-to-stop flows
• Origin-destination survey data – Includes detailed travel and demographic data from in-person questionnaires completed with a trained surveyor
• A 2016–2021 comparison dataset – Filtered to the routes in the 2021 pilot survey; only includes a selected set of columns for examining demographic and trip trends; to facilitate analysis, some survey response values were slightly adjusted to match across surveys.

How To Cite the Data

If you use TSDC data in a publication, please contact us and include a citation in your publication consistent with the following format:

"Transportation Secure Data Center." [(year)]. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Accessed [date]: www.nrel.gov/transportation/secure-transportation-data.

More Studies and Surveys

See cleansed data from other transportation studies and surveys.