Northeastern Illinois Railroad Corporation (Metra) hired Canete Medina Consulting Group Inc. to conduct a system-wide origin-destination survey for years 2016 and 2018. Conducting Metra’s system-wide survey with daily ridership of upwards of 300,000, required consistent project management, careful manpower planning, highly-trained and dedicated field crews, and extensive logistical support. The 2016 survey lasted ten weeks involving more than 55 field surveyors and supervisors. Approximately 86,500 surveys were distributed during the survey period and of those, 68,200 valid responses were collected, resulting in a survey cooperation rate of 52% (out of the 132,000 riders surveyed).

The project involved the design of 14 different questionnaires, one for each of the 14 Metra train main and branch lines to be surveyed, and the production of 150,000 questionnaires, including Spanish versions of each questionnaire. The project also included developing the online version of the survey, hiring and training field survey crews, manpower planning for 298 survey assignments, field data collection involving onboard survey for 10 weeks, processing of collected forms, data encoding, checking and auditing of data entry of 68,200 forms, geocoding of the address data, and preparation of the survey methodology report.

Year Completed: 2017