Swissmetro

The SwissMetro is a proposed major innovation to the Swiss transport system: an underground mag-lev system to connect the major urban centres in Switzerland. As part of the various assessment studies carried out so far, Abay (1999) conducted a substantial RP/SP survey of longdistance road and rail travellers using a two-stage survey method. First, the respondents were interviewed or observed about a current trip. Based on this trip SP exercises were generated, which the respondent answered in turn. This dataset consists of survey data collected on the trains between St. Gallen and Geneva, Switzerland, during March 1998. The respondents provided information in order to analyze the impact of the modal innovation in transportation, represented by the Swissmetro, a revolutionary mag-lev underground system, against the usual transport modes represented by car and train. The Swissmetro is a true innovation. It is therefore not appropriate to base forecasts of its impact on observations of existing revealed preferences (RP) data. It is necessary to obtain data from surveys of hypothetical markets/situations, which include the innovation, to assess the impact. Survey data were collected on rail-based travels, interviewing 470 respondents. Due to data problems, only 441 are used here. Nine stated choice situations were generated for each of 441 respondents, offering three alternatives: rail, Swissmetro and car (only for car owners). A similar method for relevant car trips with a household or telephone survey was deemed impractical. The sample was therefore constructed using license plate observations on the motorways in the corridor by means of video recorders. A total of 10529 relevant license plates were recorded during September 1997. The central Swiss car license agency had agreed to send up to 10000 owners of these cars a survey-pack. Until April 1998, 9658 letters were mailed, of which 1758 were returned. A total of 1070 persons filled in the survey completely and were willing to participate in the second SP survey, which was generated using the same approach used for the rail interviews. 750 usable SP surveys were returned, from the license-plate based survey.