I will walk around Guildford and ask people to complete my questionnaire, which I will make. I will ask random people walking around Guildford and tally their answers. I hope to ask about 20 people. This will show me what public transport is available to people and whether or not they are being encouraged to use alternative forms of transport to the car.
Another piece of primary data I will do, is monitor car parks, to see if they are full to capacity or whether there are lots of spaces left. If there are lots of spaces it suggests that people are travelling sustainably and not using the car as much. I will monitor Millbrook car park, and check capacity at different times in the day.
I will take photographs to go with my Primary data. I will take photos as they give evidence of what I am doing and show first hand what Guildford’s transport system is actually like. I will take a picture of where I will do my traffic count, where I do my tax disc survey, car park signs that show spaces available and I will take a photograph of Bus Lanes as Secondary data.
Some more secondary data I will collect is Bus route maps and Train route maps. This will show that public transport is available in Guildford and coming into Guildford from surrounding areas.
Conclusion
From the data I have collected, I have reached the following conclusion about my investigation. I believe that the hypothesis: ‘Guildford’s transport system is unsustainable’, is true. My reasons for this are as follows.
By studying my data I feel Guildford’s transport system is unsustainable. My traffic counts show that Guildford is very busy throughout the day, and mainly congested as a result of the vast amount of cars. From my traffic count at Onslow Street, I can see that cars were going through at a frequency of 20 per minute.
From the photographs I took from the point I conducted my traffic count, I can see that the traffic is very congested. If the transport system was sustainable it is unlikely there would be this congestion.
If I look at the photographs taken at Millbrook car park, and look at my work, there are just 9 spaces remaining in the middle of the day. This shows lots of people are using their car to get to Guildford. I can also see this by studying my tax disc survey. People are coming from local areas to Guildford by car, not by public transport or other, more sustainable methods.
By looking at my questionnaire results, it is easy to see Guildfords transport system clearly is not sustainable. When I asked people how they travelled to Guildford, nearly half of them said they came by car, and only about ¼ of the people used public transport. Another result from my questionnaire is that well over half of the public feel Guildfords Transport system is unreliable, and only 10% of the people I asked said that it was reliable.
However, from my secondary data, bus and train routes, I would have thought that Guildford’s transport system would be sustainable. But my primary data does not show this. After going through all the other data I have collected I have reached the conclusion that the Hypothesis is true: Guildford transport system is unsustainable.
Evaluation
The strengths of my investigation were that I collected a wide variety of data. The study area was relatively easy to collect data from. The fact that I spent a whole day on my investigation was good as it meant I could carry out Traffic Counts and monitor car parks at different times of the day, not just once. Another strength is that I planned what I wanted to do before I went to the study area, so no time was wasted thinking of ideas for data to collect.
The weaknesses of my investigation were that I only went to Guildford once, so I only have data for one day, which could possibly have been an unusually busy day or quiet day. There is more Primary data and Secondary data I could perhaps have collected if I had longer, or another day, in Guildford. The tax disc survey is possibly unreliable, as people who travelled by car that day, might have only done so because their train was cancelled or they missed the bus. So maybe on another day we would have different results, which could change the investigation.
A way the investigation could be extended is if I was to go to Guildford on a weekend, and collect data on that day. Therefore this would give me a better view on Guildford’s transport system and my results would be more reliable, as they would not just be for one day, but two.
If I were to improve the investigation, I would write to the Council, asking what they thought of Guildford’s transport system, and what their plans were to improve it.
