Trails System Survey Just Doesn't Cut It
By Ben Meisner
When I hear the words "extensive survey was conducted" it always leads 
me to look at the number of people who had responded out of our entire population and how those numbers were obtained.
The Prince George Centennial Project is hoping to hold a referendum to have over $7 million spent on the City's trail system.
The survey that leads to that request reports that ”a total of approximately 325 trail surveys were completed”. Now right off the bat you might want to ask yourself is 325 surveys real or just approximate?
Then you read "81% of the respondents use trails at least once a week". Please don’t extrapolate that to suggest that 80% of the people of the City use trails, at least once a week that would mean about 5,000 people a day on the trails and that folks is just not happening. In winter, the survey says 51% of the people use the trails, so that figure is reduced to 2500 a day, again just not happening.
So what have we? Well a survey that is designed to bring you the kind of results that would allow you to ask the City for $7 million bucks to build new trails. Of the people that attended the meetings to deal with the trail system,”APPROXIMATELY” 325 took time to respond to the survey even though they were there for that specific purpose.
It is a classic, unlike the Ice oval, to suggest that the whole community is involved in walking the trails when it is not.
If the City wants to conduct a survey, do a legitimate one, which will show that the citizens want, good fire protection, good policing and good roads . Until we can get beyond those three basics, trying to sell us a $7 million dollars trail system just doesn’t cut it.
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.
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Posted by: tinyapplecork on June 17 2008 4:20 AM
If this survey was geared solely to improving existing trails then one would want to conduct a customer satisfaction style survey. You interview the users. For this survey to be accurate one needs to know how many users there are. On the surface, you can claim that it is a significant survey but as Ben suggests when you are using taxpayer dollars to DEVELOP trails one needs to consider the entire population. All citizens should have received this survey and given the opportunity to participate. When interpreting the data please bear in mind that the survey is skewed to existing trail users on existing trails. Also, before deciding which trails to improve or develop be sure to understand how the suggestions came about for the NEW areas and why. Did they interview the population in the neighborhood for the suggested trail? Was the survey random? Was it targeted to users on existing trails? (By the sounds of it this is what occured but I have no idea if this is actually the case, so my assumptions are based on this.)
That being said, the data is not invalid, just know that 325 completed surveys is only significant if the correct group was targeted and interviewed appropriately. :)