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This report describes the 2008/09 reformulation of the 2004–07 Ongoing New Zealand Household Travel Survey trips database into trip chains and tours.

The reformulation required us to re-create programming sequences for key elements of the new datasets (segments, trip chains, tours, main mode and main purpose, and three different tour classification schemes) based on previous reformulation of the 1997/98 New Zealand Household Travel Survey dataset.

The reformulated datasets permitted us to compare New Zealanders’ travel patterns in 1997/98 and over 2004–07. Thus, we can comment on some trends in New Zealander’s travel behaviour.

Comparing the 2004–07 and 1997/98 datasets revealed that:

• The mean number of trip chains per day (2.3) and the mean number of tours per day (1.3) were essentially unchanged.
• Both trip chains and tours were increasingly likely to have fewer segments.
• Vehicle driver only trip chains increased significantly to 53% of all trip chains from 48%. Vehicle driver only tours increased significantly to 50% from 47%. Both findings are significant at a 95% confidence interval.
• Most trip chains and tours were ‘non-work/non-education’ tours (e.g. personal business, shopping, social, recreational, etc.).
• Walk only trip chains declined to 11% from 13%.

 Keywords: household travel, New Zealand, round trip, school travel, segment, shopping, tour, transport indicator, travel behaviour, travel survey, trend, trip chain