Information about the survey

The German Mobility Panel is a longitudinal survey that continuously collects data about the mobility behaviour in Germany since 1994. The survey focuses on people’s everyday mobility as well as on car mileage and fuel consumption in private households.

Information on why and how people travel in their daily lives is essential for transport planning and designing transport services in public transportation. In contrast to traffic and passenger counts in public transportation, the German Mobility Panel focusses on the survey respondents and their mobility behaviour.

The MOP survey consists of two parts: the survey about the everyday mobility of the respondents and the survey about car mileage and fuel consumption.

For the survey about everyday mobility, all members (from age of 10) of the representative selected households are asked to fill in a trip diary for the period of one week. Each person reports all trips including start and end time, means of transport used (bicycle, car, etc.), trip purpose (work, shopping, etc.) and distance covered.

Households with car ownership participating in the survey about everyday mobility are asked to also participate in the second part of the MOP, the survey about car mileage and fuel consumption.

Within this survey, participants are asked every spring to fill in a so-called mileage diary over a period of 8 weeks to report all refueling events. In this way, information on the date of each refueling event, odometer reading, amount of gasoline dispensed and refueling cost is collected. Participants also report the car mileage at the beginning and the end of the response period as well as some technical characteristics of the car (year, fuel type, power, etc.).