FAQs:

Yes. Randomly selected households from across the study area will receive letters from the City of Ottawa or Ministère des Transports du Québec inviting them to participate in the survey. Letters to Ottawa residents are signed by Vivi Chi, Director, Transportation Planning, Real Estate & Economic Development Department, City of Ottawa, while letters to Québec residents are signed by Mathieu Proulx, directeur, Direction de la planification et de la gestion des infrastructures, Ministère des Transports du Québec. About 28,500 households will be surveyed.

The survey is funded by six agencies spanning three levels of government: the National Capital Commission, Ministère des Transports du Québec, Ministry of Transportation of Ontario, Ville de Gatineau, City of Ottawa (including OC Transpo), and the Société de transport de l'Outaouais.

For questions about legitimacy of the survey, please contact Elizabeth Whyte, Strategic Programs and Projects Officer, City of Ottawa, by email at Elizabeth.Whyte@Ottawa.ca or by phone at (613) 315-5713 or contact the Ministère des Transports du Québec by dialing 511 or by consulting the “Contact us” section of the transports.gouv.qc.ca website.

The survey is being conducted on behalf of the TRANS Committee. The TRANS Committee was established in 1979 to coordinate efforts between the various agencies in the National Capital Region involved in planning, building, operating, and maintaining the region's transportation system. These agencies include: the National Capital Commission, Ministère des Transports du Québec, Ministry of Transportation of Ontario, Ville de Gatineau, City of Ottawa (including OC Transpo), and the Société de transport de l'Outaouais. The TRANS Committee has contracted the administration of the survey to a Canadian-based research firm with specialization in transportation data collection, R. A. Malatest & Associates Ltd.

The survey is taking place between September and November of 2022. A small field test was conducted in July 2022.

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 participating, you will ensure that the travel patterns of your community are properly represented.

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

The types of questions are listed here.

The information gathered by the survey will help transportation planning agencies and researchers better understand residents' current travel patterns, 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 the transportation facilities and services required to meet residents' needs.

Households will be randomly selected to participate from throughout the survey area, including the City of Ottawa, Ville de Gatineau, the MRC des Collines de l'Outaouais, and other selected municipalities in the metropolitan area. This includes the communities of Bowman, Cantley, Chelsea, Denholm, La Pêche, L'Ange-Gardien, Lochaber, Lochaber-Partie-Ouest, Mayo, Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette, Pontiac, Thurso, Val-des-Bois, and Val-des-Monts.

For selected households, residents 16 years of age or older may complete the survey on behalf of the household. Travel information will only be requested for residents 5 years of age or older. Trip information for residents between the ages of 5 and 15 can be provided by their parents or others in their household.

The survey will take a typical household 10 to 25 minutes or more to complete, depending on the number of people in your household and their travel activity.

Yes, residents who do not travel are just as important as those who do. Your participation 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 that the survey reflects the make-up of all residents of the National Capital Region.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on travel patterns, and will likely bring about long-lasting changes to the way people work, attend school, and engage in other activities. This survey and future surveys will help track the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and better understand how travel patterns are evolving.

Yes. To make an appointment to be interviewed please phone 1-855-688-1131 (toll-free). Please leave a voicemail that includes your preferred date and time as well as your household's secure access code, found on the letter you received.

Some households may be contacted directly by Malatest by telephone. Malatest may also follow up with some households that already completed the survey to clarify any unclear answers.

If you did not receive an advance letter, we will provide your secure access code when we contact you by phone.

Yes. Click on the survey login button to begin your survey. The survey can be accessed by entering your household's secure access code found on the letter you received.

The online survey has been developed to work on most web browsers on personal computers, tablets, and mobile devices. The survey does include some features such as Google Maps which may be more challenging to navigate using only a keyboard (if not using a mouse or touchscreen).

If you have difficulty completing the survey online, please email info@odsurvey.ca or call 1-855-688-1131 for assistance, to complete the survey over the phone, or for accommodation with alternate methods of completing the survey. For more information, please refer to the project website Accessibility Statement

Surveys can be completed online in English or French.

Surveys may be completed by phone interview for other common languages. If you have received a survey invitation and are unable to complete the survey in English or French, please phone 1-855-688-1131 (toll-free) or e-mail info@odsurvey.ca

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 from 9:00 a.m. to 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 1-855-688-1131. If you require support outside those hours, please leave a voicemail and an interviewer will call you back the next day.
2. You may also choose to give us a call at 1-855-688-1131 during those same hours and one of our professional interviewers would be happy to conduct the survey with you over the telephone.
3. Our survey interviewers may call selected households on weeknights between 5:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. and weekends between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. We will only be calling households with a listed phone number from the white pages that was matched to the address we have on file. If you received a letter inviting you to participate, we would encourage you to do the survey online or please call us, in case we cannot call you.

By participating, you will know that you have contributed to a vitally important study that will help shape the transportation system in your community for years to come. The last survey was conducted more than 10 years ago, and much has changed since then, so your contribution makes a difference!

Any information collected as part of the 2022 Origin Destination Survey is protected under privacy legislation, including Ontario’s Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA) and Québec’s Loi sur l’accès aux documents des organismes publics et sur la protection des renseignements personnels. The personal information you provide will be kept confidential and will not be shared with anyone for any other purpose outside of this survey. Your responses will be combined with other responses in your area before they are used for analysis or reporting. No information that could be traced to you or other members of your household will ever be released.

In accordance with privacy legislation, your personal information will be retained for at least 12 months after completion of data collection (so that we may respond to any requests you may have about your own information). After 12 months, we will delete your contact information (name, phone number, e-mail address) unless you direct otherwise.

Click here for more information: Privacy Statement.