All persons involved in transport and land-use planning will at some stage be involved with data collection. Even if not directly concerned with the design and conduct of surveys, they will certainly wish to use data at some time, and at that stage they will realise what should have been done in the design and administration phases of the survey. Each individual's introduction to survey data may have widely differing emotional connotations. For some, it may be a horrific experience as they try to grapple with data which has been collected by someone else, only to find that the documentation associated with that dataset is incomplete, misleading or simply non-existent. For others, who face the prospect of collecting a new set of data, it may be a challenging professional experience with ample opportunity for initiative and the exploration of new frontiers of knowledge in survey methodology. This book is intended to guide the latter group, and console the former.

This introductory chapter covers the following topics:

1.1        THE ROLE OF SURVEYS
               1.1.1        Types of Surveys
               1.1.2        Survey Purposes

1.2        THE TRANSPORT SURVEY PROCESS
               This section includes the Transport Survey Process .

1.3        TRADE-OFFS IN TRANSPORT SURVEY DESIGN

1.4        STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK