DO HIGHER SPEEDS INCREASE TRAVEL OR SAVE TIME?

Growing interest in the amount of time people spend travelling per day, rather than the number of trips they make, has encouraged more precise coding of the start and finish times of trips and of the origins and destinations recorded in travel surveys, thus allowing an examination to characteristics, particularly travel speed. Cross-sectional analysis of 1976 survey data for 12 English towns shows smaller daily travel time to be associated with higher speeds when only travel within the local urban area was considered. The relationship could be linear or a power function with an exponent greater than minus one, suggesting that some time saved at higher speeds was spent on further travel. Either relationship was transferable from one town to another provided that towns were classified by population size and travellers by age group and, possibly, employment status. Total daily travel times, including travel outside the local urban area, were greater at higher speeds and the relationship could again be linear or a power function but with a positive exponent. Transferability between towns would require classification by factors, yet to be formulated, but probably involving the characteristics of nearby towns as well as the town of residence, age group of traveller and, for the power function, employment status. A similar, but longitudinal, analysis of internal travel time per traveller was based on 1971 and 1976 survey data for one of the 12 towns, reading. This showed that speed, age group and employment status were again the main determinants of internal travel time and that a linearly decreasing relationship with speed was stable between 1971 and 1976. (Author/TRRL)

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Transportation Planning Research Colloquium 1983 held in Zandvoort on December 14-16, 1983. Volume I.
• Corporate Authors:

  Colloguium Vervoersplanologisch Speurwerk

  P.O. Box 45
  Delft,   Netherlands 
• Authors:
  • Downes, J D
  • EMMERSON, P
• Publication Date: 1984

Media Info

• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: p. 171-187
• Serial:
  • Publication of: Colloquium Vervoersplanologisch Speurwerk
  • Publisher: Colloguium Vervoersplanologisch Speurwerk

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Age; Conferences; Employment; Jobs; Origin and destination; Savings; Sociology; Speed; Traffic surveys; Travel time; Trip length; Urban areas
• Uncontrolled Terms: Increase
• Geographic Terms: United Kingdom
• ITRD Terms: 1757: Age; 8525: Conference; 697: Journey time; 2271: Occupation; 687: Origin destination traffic; 2253: Sociology; 5408: Speed; 676: Traffic survey; 8119: United Kingdom; 313: Urban area
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00389259
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Institute for Road Safety Research, SWOV
• Files: ITRD, TRIS
• Created Date: Oct 30 1984 12:00AM