Design of the “Future Mobility in Canada Survey” (FMCS) to assess the evolving mobility landscape in urban Canada with an emphasis on automated vehicles

Abstract

The mobility tool landscape continues to evolve because of shared mobility services, the prospect of automated vehicles (AVs), teleworking, and unpredicted challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic. It is critical that public and private sector actors understand how travel behavior changes due to these catalysts. A nationwide Canadian survey, called the Future Mobility in Canada Survey (FMCS), was designed to capture the complex decision-making processes of travel behavior changes and the adoption of new mobility tools by assessing individual preferences, affective motivations, and behavioral intentions. FMCS investigated four main areas: (1) respondents’ intentions to adopt AVs, (2) respondents’ use of shared forms of mobility services, (3) respondents’ recent experience with telework and their preferences towards it, and (4) respondents’ behavior across the COVID-19 pandemic for certain modes and telework. FMCS addressed these four areas by collecting responses from 5002 respondents between October and November 2021, across the five largest Canadian census metropolitan areas in terms of population (Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Ottawa-Gatineau, and Calgary) and Hamilton, which ranked 9th largest in 2021. This paper presents an overview of FMCS, emphasizing novel aspects of the survey design and data collection process reporting response burden and rates, while the major focus of this paper is scrutinizing the steps taken to obtain respondents’ intentions to adopt various types of AVs including shared AVs, pooled AVs, private AVs, and automated shuttle buses. The insights are relevant for other survey-based studies and are applicable for researchers who investigate adoption of new mobility tools and consequent travel behavior changes.