THATS

Transportation planning agencies use travel demand models to assess the impacts of proposed policies on household travel. These models attempt to understand how changes in transportation services affect people’s ability to engage in their daily out-of-home and in-home activities. To better represent people’s activity patterns, the University of Toronto is investigating a “next generation” of models that focus on simulating household activity and travel over a full week (rather than currently used single-day models) to better capture how people actually plan their lives. This week-long focus is especially important in today’s world of increased working from home and online shopping, as well as to understand weekend vs. weekday activities and travel.

THATS (Toronto Household Activity-Travel Survey), developed by the University of Toronto, is a web-based and smartphone application-based survey that has been designed to gather detailed activity and travel information over the course of one week in an unobtrusive manner as possible. It collects essential household sociodemographic information, passively tracks trips made using the smartphone app, and asks a few follow-up questions to confirm each trip recorded by the app.

The goal of the THATS study is to gain new insight into how best to improve transport systems in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area. How can mobility become more efficient? What do people expect from transport systems? How does the ongoing digitalization of various aspects of life influence investments in our transport systems?  

If you are interested in participating in THATS and would like more information on how it works, please refer to the following documents:

Informed Consent

Data Privacy Notice

Information for Study Participants

Frequently Asked Questions

THATS Design Comprehensive Report

To learn how to download and install Ma Mobilitie, please watch the instructional videos:

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us by email at thats@utoronto.ca