Advanced Mobility Surveys with API Integrations to Google Maps and Entur

Introduction

Opinion is one of the leading research institutes in Norway. The company works on both qualitative and quantitative projects, conducting a range of surveys that lie at the intersection of the two—where Opinion adds significant value for its clients through its expertise.

A substantial part of Opinion's work focuses on mobility and transportation studies. These can be extremely complex and time-consuming, requiring rigorous processes to ensure reliable, high-quality data collection.

Opinion collaborated with MI Pro to advance this work and make the survey process even more efficient and seamless.

Background

Understanding how individuals travel around cities is crucial for improving public services such as buses, trains, and trams. However, collecting this data comprehensively is extremely complicated. Knowing only how often someone takes a train each week does not reveal how far they travel, which stops they use, or how long their journey takes.

Ruter, one of the largest public transport companies in Norway, sought a deeper understanding of customer satisfaction and travel habits, which is why they recruited Opinion to gather this insight.

The Process

• Opinion conducted 1,200 interviews with bus passengers.
• A 14- to 17-minute survey was designed to collect the necessary data, with approximately two-thirds of the questionnaire covering details about all trips respondents had taken to date.
• Opinion processed the data by breaking down each journey into trips. For example, a 300-meter walk to the bus, one bus ride, and a 200-meter walk would be counted as one journey consisting of three trips.
  
• For each trip, Opinion measured both distance and time.
• Data was continuously collected and sent via an API to Opinion's Data Lake, where it was processed, weighted, and exported to various platforms for further analysis.

The Challenges

The process described above faces the main challenge of involving an enormous amount of data. Considering the many different bus lines and the fact that these lines change regularly, adding driving directions, it quickly becomes complicated. Providing all available options would create an overwhelming list in the survey.

Additionally, people's memories may not be reliable when it comes to estimating distance or time. For example, someone might know that their usual commute takes 30 minutes, but that does not mean they are aware of the distance traveled. Getting them to recall both accurately is challenging and can lead to unreliable information.

Moreover, you have to consider the necessary data processing. Depending on someone's familiarity with the city, they may not know how to spell the stops on their journey. This means there needs to be a system in place to manually check the data lines to ensure accuracy. This introduces not only the potential for human error but also adds additional time burdens and ultimately costs.

Results

This collaboration has led to several positive outcomes. Through MI Pro's support, Opinion has:

• Saved significant time during the interview process. Without the MI Pro integrations, each interview would take an additional 10 minutes to complete.
• Reduced the level of data processing required, as the Google Maps integration accurately reveals the exact stop people are searching for. This frees up time for more sophisticated tasks.
• Collected accurate distances for each trip taken by respondents.
• Provided automatic feedback on any data errors. For example, if a starting point seems incorrectly indicated, the system flags this for the respondent by asking, "Are you sure you traveled from A to B in X minutes?" This saves interviewers from having to delete interviews and significantly improves efficiency and data quality.
• Eliminated the need to constantly export data to clients, as MI Pro is integrated with Opinion's Data Lake, automating this process.

What Makes the MI Pro Solution Unique?

The sophistication of what MI Pro implemented makes this solution quite unique. By integrating with Google Maps and other transportation services, MI Pro has saved both time and effort for Opinion. The success of this project has also enabled the partnership to expand to other modes of transport, utilizing third-party API integrations to increase efficiency and enhance data quality.

By introducing greater automation, users of the data can focus on the insights it provides, rather than the process of creating it.

"The benefit of partnering with MI Pro is the level of service you receive. The fact that you have people who really listen to what you say is very important to us. The MI Pro team takes the time to understand our business problem, rather than delivering a generic ‘one size fits all’ approach.”

— John Lauring Pedersen, CEO of Opinion