Quantity and Quality of Productive Commuting Time Use in a University Setting: A Heckman Model

In North America, the average individual taking public transportation spends about 45 minutes commuting one way each day. This equates to about 398 hours per year and thus ways to reduce travel time are imperative. Rather than attempting to reduce travel time directly, changing the perspective of how commuting time is spent by improving the productive use of time provides a more cost effective solution. This paper explored and measured the extent that bus commuters are currently using their time actively during in-vehicle travel time and bus-stop waiting time. Heckman’s selection method was used to incorporate passengers who do not use their time actively to correct for sample selection bias and model the decision to use time actively as a two stage process. Average quantity and quality of primary activity time was found to be 66% and 20 minutes, respectively. The impact of information and communication technology is predominant in almost all models tested, with degree of crowding and gender being a major factor in one’s choice to use time actively. Given that individuals are able to work productively during their transit commute, commuters will in hopes be more attracted to use transit by having this advantage over driving. If being productive does have an influence on an individual’s travel mode choice, there could be important implications on transportation modeling and demand management.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10 Traveler Behavior and Values.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Zhao, Jinhua
  • Lung, Allison
  • Guo, Zhan
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2013-1-13 to 2013-1-17
• Date: 2013

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 19p
• Monograph Title: TRB 92nd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bus transit; Commuters; Commuting; Productivity; Travel time; Universities and colleges
• Uncontrolled Terms: Time use
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01476170
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 13-1100
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 19 2013 9:05AM