Help improve Transportation in Northern Virginia – take this very short survey

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  • July 5, 2016 at 2:52 pm #1054776
    mello yello
    Participant

    What an odd survey. I am baffled by what the data will help with.

    July 5, 2016 at 2:57 pm #1054778
    huskerdont
    Participant

    Yeah, basically I just did it to put in a voice for getting around by bike and a vote for more protected bike lanes and MUPs. The questions about what you think will be the most likely to increase or decrease congestion were quite odd, with the same items being listed for both when some clearly will only go one way.

    July 5, 2016 at 3:05 pm #1054780
    annoyedindc
    Participant

    It was certainly an odd survey and I wonder as well how they’ll use it. I put in my $0.02 for protected bike lanes.

    July 5, 2016 at 4:34 pm #1054785
    scoot
    Participant

    Question 3 is either pointless or disingenuous.

    In the survey options, why is the projected regional population increase coupled to the development pattern? Is someone hoping to use the results in order to fuel opposition to smart growth? (“See, the public hates mixed-use development. Everyone agrees it will cause terrible traffic.”)

    July 5, 2016 at 6:51 pm #1054792
    chris_s
    Participant

    I can’t see what will possibly be gleaned from question #3 other than “people don’t understand what causes congestion”.

    The rest of it makes sense to me: commute start and end points + non-commute trip modes and travel times.

    July 5, 2016 at 6:59 pm #1054793
    ShawnoftheDread
    Participant

    @chris_s 142565 wrote:

    The rest of it makes sense to me: commute start and end points + non-commute trip modes and travel times.

    But why isn’t mode included in the commute portion?

    July 5, 2016 at 7:00 pm #1054794
    chris_s
    Participant

    @ShawnoftheDread 142566 wrote:

    But why isn’t mode included in the commute portion?

    No idea!

    July 5, 2016 at 7:02 pm #1054795
    mello yello
    Participant

    @chris_s 142565 wrote:

    I can’t see what will possibly be gleaned from the last two questions other than “people don’t understand what causes congestion”.

    The rest of it makes sense to me: commute start and end points + non-commute trip modes and travel times.

    Wouldn’t it make more sense to have commute start and end points and commute modes and travel times? I for one make two commutes per day and very few non-commute trips per week, and the non-commute trips are generally not into Virginia. Commuting is 95% of my weekday travel, and it would make sense to have mode and time options to input for that, instead of only start/end points.

    This is a horribly designed survey.

    July 5, 2016 at 7:16 pm #1054796
    huskerdont
    Participant

    I also wondered what the point was to Question #2. Why have me chose three completely random and noncomparable trips? Isn’t how long these trips take irrelevant without knowing how far they are or where they are? And what mode you chose doesn’t mean much without knowing the mode chosen for all trips. So it’s basically, yeah, some guy rode his bike to a grocery store once; this other guy, he drove to a mall. I think they probably could have already guessed that.

    July 5, 2016 at 7:23 pm #1054797
    Vicegrip
    Participant

    agree. At best it is slanted in some unseen way to harvest some skewed data.

    July 5, 2016 at 8:10 pm #1002418
    americancyclo
    Participant

    The Northern Virginia Transportation Authority has some links to TransAction 2040 Update (which i can’t get to at work)

    and I’m sure the data will be used as it was in their 2015 Annual Report with some stunning nuggets of wisdom such as:

    In a surveycommissioned bythe Authority in2015 as part of theTransAction update,Northern Virginiansdescribed typicalNorthern Virginiatravel as slowand congested,unpredictable andfrustrating.

    July 5, 2016 at 8:35 pm #1054800
    LeprosyStudyGroup
    Participant

    theTransAction … typicalNorthern … congested,unpredictable

    these are all great bike forum screen names though

    July 6, 2016 at 12:28 pm #1054813
    chris_s
    Participant

    Let’s be honest, it’s not a statistically valid survey anyway, so how helpful is it really? That said, if we can skew their terrible survey in a way that is useful toward bikes I’m all for it.

    July 6, 2016 at 1:01 pm #1054817
    rcannon100
    Participant

    Yeah – I was immediately “Huh??” The results of a badly designed survey cannot be corrected by participation. Methodology matters.

    July 6, 2016 at 1:21 pm #1054819
    mstone
    Participant

    The problem is that now we have the internet and everyone thinks they’re a statistician.

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