Semi-automated data collection public transport bus kilometers

There are approximately 6000 public transport buses in the Netherlands. How many kilometers do they drive? What proportion of that is driven in the Netherlands and what proportion abroad? And how many kilometers do foreign public transport buses drive in the Netherlands?

Statistics Netherlands estimates vehicle kilometers using odometer readings. Annual kilometers per vehicle are estimated based on the difference in kilometers between two readings and the number of days between readings. The results are weighted to compensate for the group of vehicles for which insufficient data is available to make an estimate. The result is an estimate of the total number of kilometers traveled by Dutch buses at home and abroad. Unfortunately, border crossings are not registered by odometers. This means we have to rely on other data sources to estimate vehicle kilometers per territory.

What did we do?

It is important to also estimate bus kilometers by territory, among other things to estimate road traffic emissions. Different sources for coaches and public transport buses. Coaches are used for international travel more often, whilst public transport buses mostly drive within the national borders. There are however a select number of international bus lines operating in or from the Netherlands, operated by Dutch, German and Belgian companies. For these lines, data is collected from a WIKI page on cross-border public transport. The WIKI page contains a complete and up-to-date list of all international bus lines including relevant information on timetables, routes, type of bus etc. A major drawback however was our way of processing this data. This was done manually to a large extent, making it into a time-consuming and error-prone process.

Statistics Netherlands received a Eurostat Grant to automate the data collection. The grant was used to develop a semi-automated tool, which automatically copies all relevant information from the WIKI page. The tool combines data on timetables, routes and the nationality of buses to estimate kilometers by territory. The new tool has been a time-saver but more importantly, it has improved data quality by eliminating errors.

Results

The Eurostat grant enabled us to develop a semi-automatic data collection and processing tool to estimate public transport bus kilometers by territory. The tool was used to estimate vehicle kilometers for reporting years 2023 and 2024. A table with the new figures is available for download below. The table also includes 2018-2022, estimated using the old manual data collection and processing. A report on the project, as well as a PowerPoint presentation are also available. 

Co-funded by the European Union under call SMP-ESS-2022-TRANSPORT-STATS-IBA —New transport statistics

Disclaimer: Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Eurostat. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.