Comparing Short- and Long-Term Values of Travel Time Savings Derived from a Joint Modelling Framework

The value of travel time is an important element of cost-benefit analysis for appraisal of transportation project, by encapsulating the willingness to pay of the population for improvements in the transport system. Those values are typically obtained from mobility choice data, in the form of revealed or stated preference surveys. Although short term decisions, such as route and mode choice, are typically used for this purpose, a growing number of authors is arguing that long term decisions, such as residential or workplace choice, might provide more meaningful values for the evaluation of transportation projects, as those decisions have a longer-lasting effect on the experienced travel times and might thus be taken more carefully. This paper uses the German Value of Time Study, that contains both short and long term choice experiments, to investigate the impact of different time horizons on the valuation of time. In particular, the availability in the dataset of two different long term experiments (residential and workplace choice) allow to evaluate not only the impact of the time horizon, but of the type of long term decision. Using a joint model including all relevant choice situations, this paper investigates the difference in the valuation of time coming from different kind of choice experiments. In total 2,279 respondents faced relevant 29,968 choice situations (13,009 short term games, 7,621 residential location games and 9,338 workplace games.). The results show that the chosen time horizon does have a significant effect on the valuation of travel time and cost. Another finding is that the type of long term decision and the structure of the choice experiment itself also influence the valuation. The resulting VOTs with a sharp decline by about a half for commute trips show an opposite effect to previous work. Thus this paper demonstrates the need for refinement of the definition of such a value of time.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10 Standing Committee on Traveler Behavior and Values.
• Authors:
  • Dubernet, Ilka
  • Dubernet, Thibaut
  • Axhausen, Kay W
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
• Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 16p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Benefit cost analysis; Choice models; Mode choice; Residential location; Revealed preferences; Route choice; Stated preferences; Travel time; Value of time; Workplaces
• Subject Areas: Highways; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01661387
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-05391
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 27 2018 9:45AM