FAQs:

Yes. Randomly selected households from across the study area will receive letters from their local government inviting them to participate in the survey online. Residents of the Central Okanagan will receive a letter signed from Rafael Villarreal, Sustainable Transportation Partnership of the Central Okanagan, and City of Vernon residents will receive a letter signed by Kim Flick, Director, Community Infrastructure and Development. About 4,600 households will be surveyed.

The survey is an initiative of the Regional District of Central Okanagan, City of Vernon, City of Kelowna, City of West Kelowna, District of Lake Country, Westbank First Nation, the District of Peachland and the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.

For questions about transportation research in the Okanagan, including this survey, please contact Cameron Taylor-Noonan, City of Kelowna CTaylor-Noonan@kelowna.ca 250.470.0656 or Angela Broadbent, City of Vernon, ABroadbent@vernon.ca 250.550.7831 or visit smarttrips.ca/travelsurvey.

Victoria-based research firm R. A. Malatest & Associates Ltd. will conduct the survey on behalf of the project partners.

The survey takes place between October and December of 2018.

Participation in the survey is voluntary.

While voluntary, your participation is important. Only a limited number of households are invited to join the study, so the few minutes you take to participate will have a big impact. By representing your community, you will ensure that your survey accurately portrays travel patterns for residents of your area.

The survey will collect information about your household, members of the household, and trips they made the previous weekday.

Types of questions are listed here.

The information on travel patterns will help planners understand residents’ current transportation choices and trip purposes. Your responses will be combined with other responses in your area and the results will be used to help plan transportation infrastructure and services in communities in the area to meet residents’ needs.

Households are randomly selected from a survey area that includes the six communities in the Central Okanagan and the City of Vernon.

Online, the survey takes 15 to 25 minutes or more depending on your household size and number of trips.

Yes, residents who do not travel are just as important as those that do. Your survey answers will help build a snapshot of the travel patterns of the population as a whole, including people who did not travel on the day for which travel information is being provided. Your participation will ensure the survey reflects the make-up of the general population.

Yes. To make an appointment to be interviewed please phone 1-855-319-2887 (toll-free) Please leave a voicemail that includes the date and time as well as your household’s secure access code, found on the advance letter.

In late November or early December, some households in areas with low response may be contacted by Malatest by telephone. Malatest may also follow up with some households who already completed surveys to clarify their answers.

Yes. Click on the Survey Login button to begin your survey. The survey can be accessed by entering the household’s secure access code found on the advance letter.

Surveys can be completed online in English only.

Surveys may be completed by phone interview for other common languages. If you have received a survey invitation and cannot do the survey, please phone 1-855-319-2887 (toll-free). Let us know what language you would like to complete the survey in, and we will try to accommodate you if we have a survey interviewer who speaks your language.

You can participate in two ways:

1. You may choose to fill out the survey online by signing in on the home page using the secure access code provided on the first page of the letter you received. If you begin the survey online and require assistance, we also provide phone-in support between 9:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. on weekdays, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Saturdays and 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Sundays at 1-855-319-2887 (toll-free).
2. You may also choose to give us a call at 1-855-319-2887 (toll-free) during those same hours and one of our professional interviewers will be happy to conduct the survey with you over the telephone.

You will know that you have contributed to vitally important research study. The last survey was conducted five years ago, and much has changed since then, so your contribution makes a difference!

Also, as a way of saying "thank you", Malatest & Associates is providing a prize draw for a $500 cash prize, or one of 100 $25 gift cards for a local merchant. Odds of winning a prize are about 1 in 48.

Prize draw info. Prize winners will also have the option to donate their prize to a local charitable organization if preferred.

The Okanagan Travel Survey information is protected under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Per FOIPPA requirements, your information will be retained for at least 12 months after conclusion of data collection. Survey data is combined with other responses in the area and cannot be traced back to an individual or household. Click here for more information: Privacy Statement.