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Transport policy is constrained by the dilemma of the positive impacts of lowering the generalised costs of travel and their today non-ignorable negative externalities. This chapter details this dilemma and discusses current policy ideas to manage and overcome it against the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on travel habits and work behaviour. The impacts are presented for Switzerland for which a large-scale GPS tracking survey spanning the autumn 2019 to winter 2021 period is available. The chapter concludes by highlighting the dilemma of transport policy by discussing a number of potential solutions for the future.

Purpose — The paper reports on a research project exploring new approaches for analysing travel demand induced by changes in generalised costs of travel and activity participation. The description of the survey approach, which to our knowledge is novel in its application, reports descriptive analyses of the respondents' reactions to the changes implied in the household interviews.

Methodology — A sample of respondents were administered a 5 day travel diary, from which 1 day was selected for further analysis. Travel times for trips conducted that day were changed using predefined heuristics based on the household characteristics to attain significant changes in the generalised costs of the reported trips. Respondents were then presented with these hypothetical scenarios in face-to-face interviews. All household members were asked to state how the implied changes would have affected their activity scheduling on the specified day, i.e. to adapt their reported schedule to the new conditions.

Findings — The postulated induced travel effect could be observed, in that the modifications to the generalised costs of travel affect the respondents' travel patterns in general, and the number and durations of conducted out-of-home activities in particular. However, the predominant reaction to changing travel times is the adaptation of departure time, which does not directly interfere with trip generation. Indicators of the effects have been shown, and are quite weak as far as activity generation effects are concerned. The activities most likely to be re-planned are leisure activities and sojourns at the home location, as is consistent with expectations.

This chapter summarizes some of the results from the Working Group “National Travel Surveys” in COST Action 355. All 50 presentations could not be reviewed here; thus, we focus on three crucial topics:

• the periodicity of data collection, but also its longitudinal aspects (advantages of continuous surveying, repeated cross-sections vs. panel surveys, etc.),

• new technologies for improving the efficiency and accuracy of mobility surveys (computer-assisted telephone, Web-based, interviews, GPS, GSM, RDS, etc.),

• innovative approaches, exemplified by qualitative surveys combined with conventional quantitative ones, and by biographical approaches.

the periodicity of data collection, but also its longitudinal aspects (advantages of continuous surveying, repeated cross-sections vs. panel surveys, etc.),

new technologies for improving the efficiency and accuracy of mobility surveys (computer-assisted telephone, Web-based, interviews, GPS, GSM, RDS, etc.),

innovative approaches, exemplified by qualitative surveys combined with conventional quantitative ones, and by biographical approaches.