Examination of Trip Production with Fuel Consumption Data Analysis: A Case Study of Shiraz City

Home interview surveys and various data collection methods have traditionally been utilized for transportation studies, even though they are costly and time-consuming. Moreover, there are not sufficient mechanisms for checking the accuracy of such data collection methods. In addition, it is worth mentioning that, as per the current practice, such data collection processes still need to be updated on a continuous basis, highlighting the need to new tools that are comparatively cheaper. Nevertheless, the validity assessment of combined revealed and stated preference data for analysis purposes often becomes a complicated task. In this study, the use of data collected through the fuel smart cards is proposed and investigated for examining travel demand patterns in City of Shiraz, Iran. Coupled with other information technologies, smart fuel card data can provide an alternative replacement to the conventional time-consuming transport planning surveys. Based on this study, it is found that the number of trips computed based on fuel consumption data have not matched with the ones which predicted from traditional home interview surveys (1999). Moreover, it is shown that there is strong correlation between the trip generation and the corresponding zonal fuel consumption (2012).