News Releases

New UWI survey wants to know your household’s daily travel patterns

For Release Upon Receipt - December 16, 2019

St. Augustine


ST. AUGUSTINE, Trinidad and Tobago. December 16, 2019 – The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The UWI St. Augustine Campus is currently conducting a household travel behaviour survey, targeting households along the East West Corridor, between Carenage and Sangre Grande.

Data is being collected about citizens' day-to-day travel, to find out if persons walk or take a bus or maxi; carpool or drive alone; and how much is spent on travel. The survey region includes over 500,000 persons, a proportion of these have been randomly selected to participate.

Dr. Trevor Townsend, Project Lead and Senior Lecturer in Traffic and Transportation Engineering, explained that the data collected will help paint a more complete picture of transportation patterns, which his department plans to use to better design proper interventions for the local transportation system. “We hope to link those travel patterns with the information on the transport system to really analyse how households make their travel decisions. This is the first time we are doing this in Trinidad and we hope to use to go forward on a continuous basis,” he said.

The data from the survey, which is scheduled to be completed this Friday, December 20, will also aid in the development of sensible policies and plans for the further development of the national transportation system. The UWI thanks all persons who have willingly participated to date and looks forward to the successful completion of the data collection process.

Persons administering the survey all have identification badges as well as a letter of authorization from the department. For further information on this project, contact Dr. Trevor Townsend at Trevor.Townsend@sta.uwi.edu.

END. 

About The UWI

For over 70 years The University of the West Indies (The UWI) has provided service and leadership to the Caribbean region and wider world. The UWI has evolved from a university college of London in Jamaica with 33 medical students in 1948 to an internationally respected, regional university with near 50,000 students and five campuses: Mona in Jamaica, St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago, Cave Hill in Barbados, Five Islands in Antigua and Barbuda and an Open Campus. As part of its robust globalization agenda, The UWI has established partnering centres with universities in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa including the State University of New York (SUNY)-UWI Center for Leadership and Sustainable Development; the Canada-Caribbean Studies Institute with Brock University; the Strategic Alliance for Hemispheric Development with Universidad de los Andes (UNIANDES); the UWI-China Institute of Information Technology, the University of Lagos (UNILAG)-UWI Institute of African and Diaspora Studies and the Institute for Global African Affairs with the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The UWI offers over 800 certificate, diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science & Technology, Social Sciences and Sport. 

As the region’s premier research academy, The UWI’s foremost objective is driving the growth and development of the regional economy. The world’s most reputable ranking agency, Times Higher Education, has ranked The UWI among the top 600 universities in the world for 2019 and 2020, and the 40 best universities in Latin America and the Caribbean for 2018 and 2019. The UWI has been the only Caribbean-based university to make the prestigious lists.  For more, visit www.uwi.edu.

   

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