How YouGov uses motiontag's mobility tracking technology to transform mobility research

With the rising importance of addressing climate change and adapting urban and rural mobility strategies, transportation planners and policymakers need reliable, comprehensive data to make informed decisions. However, traditional data collection methods like surveys and travel diaries have significant limitations, relying heavily on subjective reporting and failing to capture the complexity of multimodal travel behaviors.

For organizations like YouGov, which provides insights for key transportation stakeholders, access to precise, continuous data has become critical for understanding how people move and use transport systems.

By leveraging MOTIONTAG’s cutting-edge mobility tracking technology, YouGov has redefined how mobility data is collected, analyzed, and applied — particularly in complex areas of public transport networks.

For decades, mobility research relied on manual methods to gather data. Surveys and travel diaries have been staples of the industry, asking participants to self-report their travel behaviors over a given period. While these methods have contributed valuable insights, they come with inherent flaws:

1. Subjectivity and Memory Bias: Participants often struggle to recall their travel patterns accurately, leading to incomplete or inaccurate data.
2. Limited Scope: Traditional studies typically focus on specific timeframes, regions, or travel modes, which can result in an incomplete picture of mobility trends.
3. Resource-Intensive: Collecting and analyzing data manually requires significant time and resources, making large-scale or continuous studies challenging.

These limitations are especially problematic in an era where transportation systems are becoming increasingly multimodal. From cars and trains to bicycles, scooters, and walking, understanding how individuals combine various transport modes within a single journey is essential for designing effective mobility solutions.
This posed a significant challenge for YouGov as it sought to provide actionable insights to its clients, such as Deutsche Bahn and public transport associations. Accurately tracking multimodal trips required detailed, continuous data, which traditional methods could not provide.

motiontag provided YouGov with a comprehensive solution to these challenges. By integrating motiontag smartphone tracking technology into its MOVE app, YouGov was able to:

Track Entire Travel Chains: Capture start-to-finish journeys, including all modes of transport used.
Automate Mode Detection: Identify various transport modes, such as cars, buses, trains, bicycles, and walking, with high accuracy.
Ensure Privacy Compliance: Collect data securely and ethically, meeting strict privacy standards.

These capabilities enabled YouGov to gather the granular data needed to analyse mobility patterns and evaluate public transport initiatives.

1. Multimodal Insights at Scale

YouGov captured the full complexity of travel chains, including trips that involved multiple transport modes. This capability provided a detailed view of how people move across urban and rural areas, helping to tailor mobility strategies to different regional needs.

2. Real-Time Data for Actionable Insights


The MOVE app continuously tracked participants’ travel behaviors, generating millions of data points monthly. This real-time data allowed YouGov to:

• Monitor travel trends over time.
• Evaluate the long-term impacts of mobility initiatives.
• Provide timely insights to policymakers and transport providers.

3. Enhanced Participant Engagement


The MOVE app’s user-friendly interface allowed participants to correct misidentified transport modes, such as taxis or e-scooters. This feature improved data accuracy and ensured that the insights reflected real-world behaviors.

4. Scalable Solutions for National Studies


With MOTIONTAG’s support, YouGov scaled its research to include 8,000 participants, representing 68.6 million people in Germany. This level of scalability made it possible to conduct robust analyses that were representative and actionable.

The collaboration between YouGov and MOTIONTAG revealed several key insights about the Deutschland-Ticket:

• Increased Public Transport Usage: Ticket holders used public transport for 30% of their trips, compared to just 12% among the general population.
• Reduced Car Dependency: The data showed a noticeable decline in private car usage among ticket holders, supporting the ticket’s goal of promoting sustainable travel.
• Multimodal Travel Patterns: The MOVE app highlighted how ticket users combined different transport modes, such as trains and buses, to complete their journeys.

Looking into the future

These findings provided Deutsche Bahn and other stakeholders with the evidence to refine and expand the Deutschland-Ticket initiative, ensuring its long-term success.

One of our key strengths is its ability to capture multimodal travel chains. Traditional methods often struggle to track trips that involve multiple transport modes, such as a journey that begins with a bicycle ride, transitions to a train, and concludes with a short walk. Our technology identifies each mode and links them into a cohesive travel chain, providing a comprehensive view of how people move from door to door.

This capability is particularly valuable for understanding:

• Urban Mobility Trends: In metropolitan areas, where public transport, bicycles, and walking often dominate, multimodal insights can guide infrastructure investments and policy decisions.
• Rural Mobility Challenges: In less densely populated regions, where private cars are more prevalent, data can inform strategies to make public transport more accessible and appealing.
• First and Last-Mile Solutions: Understanding how people connect to major transport hubs is crucial for optimising services like bike-sharing, e-scooters, and on-demand shuttles.