  Household travel surveys have been used for decades to collect individuals
and households' travel behavior. However, self-reported surveys are subject to
recall bias, as respondents might struggle to recall and report their
activities accurately. This study examines the time reporting error of public
transit users in a nationwide household travel survey by matching, at the
individual level, five consecutive years of data from two sources, namely the
Danish National Travel Survey (TU) and the Danish Smart Card system
(Rejsekort). Survey respondents are matched with travel cards from the
Rejsekort data solely based on the respondents' declared spatiotemporal travel
behavior. Approximately, 70% of the respondents were successfully matched with
Rejsekort travel cards. The findings reveal a median time reporting error of
11.34 minutes, with an Interquartile Range of 28.14 minutes. Furthermore, a
statistical analysis was performed to explore the relationships between the
survey respondents' reporting error and their socio-economic and demographic
characteristics. The results indicate that females and respondents with a fixed
schedule are in general more accurate than males and respondents with a
flexible schedule in reporting their times of travel. Moreover, trips reported
during weekdays or via the internet displayed higher accuracies compared to
trips reported during weekends and holidays or via telephone interviews. This
disaggregated analysis provides valuable insights that could help in improving
the design and analysis of travel surveys, as well accounting for reporting
errors/biases in travel survey-based applications. Furthermore, it offers
valuable insights underlying the psychology of travel recall by survey
respondents.
