The use of travel time by rail passengers in Great Britain

In the face of a society that exhibits an increasing dependence on motorised mobility, the response of transport policy is one that remains grounded in the pursuit of quicker journey times. Less time spent travelling is assumed to convert ‘unproductive’ time into economically valuable time. This paper explores an alternative perspective on travel time. It seeks to examine the notion that travel time, rather than being wasted, can and does possess a positive utility. This brings into question the extent of assumed economic benefits derived from schemes and policies intended to reduce journey times. Specifically the paper reports on a national mail-back questionnaire survey of 26,221 rail passengers in Great Britain conducted in autumn 2004. The survey examined how passengers used their time on the train, how worthwhile that time use was considered to be and the role of mobile technologies. The results paint a picture of travel time use in which the behaviour and opinions of commuters, business travellers and leisure travellers are compared and contrasted. A substantial if not overwhelming incidence of positive utility of travel time use is revealed, especially for business travel but also for commuting and leisure travel. In light of the survey evidence the paper points to the challenge of understanding the notion of productivity and offers some critical comments concerning the current approach to economic appraisal in Britain.     

New appraisal values of travel time saving and reliability in Great Britain

Transportation - This paper provides an overview of the study ‘Provision of market research for value of time savings and reliability’ undertaken by the Arup/ITS Leeds/Accent consortium...     

Dense network traffic models,Travel time reliability and traffic management. I: General introduction

This paper is the first of a pair of papers discussing two main themes concerning dense network modelling. These themes are: (1) the changing nature of traffic management technology and the underlying objectives behind traffic management practice, and (2) the use of measures of network reliability in models, especially as an element of the evaluation of alternative network configurations. This paper considers the role and function of dense network models, and their relationships with other transport network models on the basis of the hierarchical view of models. It then explores the peculiar characteristics of dense network models and provides examples of typical models. Changing needs for modelling capabilities, in terms of the evolution of traffic management technology and practice are discussed, pointing the way to future model developments. The companion paper develops the second theme through the definition and application of a set of network reliability indices that may be applied to different trip movements.     

The demand impacts of train punctuality in great britain: systematic review,meta-analysis and some new econometric insights

Transportation - This paper updates and extends the systematic review and meta-analysis of Wardman and Batley (Transportation 41:1041–1069, 2014), which hitherto was the most comprehensive...     

The valuation and demand impacts of the worthwhile use of travel time with specific reference to the digital revolution and endogeneity

Transportation - The research reported here is concerned with how the worthwhile use of travel time might impact on the value of travel time savings (VTTS) and on demand set in the context of the...     

Assessing the employment agglomeration and social accessibility impacts of high speed rail in Eastern Australia

There is growing interest in establishing additional evidence, under the umbrella of the wider economy impacts of transport infrastructure projects, to support transport projects in general and public transport projects in particular that struggle to obtain benefit–cost ratios sufficient to gain the support of financial agencies. This paper focuses on one element of wider economy impacts, often referred to as effective economic (employment) density or employment agglomeration impacts, and another, less usually identified, social accessibility impact (SAI) which we refer to as effective social density, which in broad terms provide, correspondingly, evidence of the potential gains in work-related output (often referred to as productivity gains) and potential gains in non-work-related outputs. Both are associated with gains in individual and household benefit attributable to improved accessibility to services linked with populations and particular locations. The SAIs may capture some of the induced benefits in those jurisdictions where these are included routinely in benefit–cost analysis, and the methodology here is most appropriate to those settings where an existing calibrated demand curve may not be available. Using the proposed high speed rail (HSR) project between Sydney and Melbourne as the empirical setting, we identify economic agglomeration and social accessibility benefits for work and non-work related activity respectively. We find the former to be relatively small compared to the significant gains associated with non-work related travel activity, suggesting the greatest benefits associated with HSR, especially for those residents outside of the major metropolitan areas, will be non-work related travel activity.     

The importance of time in transit and reliability of transit time for shippers,receivers, and carriers

Reliability of transit time is reputed to be the most important variable influencing freight transport today, according to shipper surveys. Average transit time also plays a major role. A model is developed that shows how a cost-minimizing shipper will adjust its economic order quantity as reliability and/or time in transit changes. Such changes impact on average inventory costs, ordering costs, expected shortage costs and expected excess costs. The model is developed for both discrete and continuous transit time distributions. Reliability is defined as the variance of transit time. A matrix is prepared for some sample data, which shows the minimum cost attainable with each mean/variance of transit time distribution. Comparing across rows and columns of the matrix enables one to show the value (reduction in total cost) obtainable by improving reliability and/or mean transit time. In addition, value can be obtained by improving reliability while increasing average transit time. It is suggested that the model can be used for shippers in negotiating service improvements with carriers and by carriers in negotiating service improvements with shippers. In the former case, the carrier can determine how much they are willing to pay for the improvement, whereas in the latter case, the carriers can determine how much they are able to charge for the improvement.     

Improving the forecasting accuracy of air passenger and air cargo demand: the application of back-propagation neural networks

This study employs back-propagation neural networks (BPN) to improve the forecasting accuracy of air passenger and air cargo demand from Japan to Taiwan. The factors which influence air passenger and air cargo demand are identified, evaluated and analysed in detail. The results reveal that some factors influence both passenger and cargo demand, and the others only one of them. The forecasting accuracy of air passenger and air cargo demand has been improved efficiently by the proposed procedure to evaluate input variables. The established model improves dramatically the forecasting accuracy of air passenger demand with an extremely low mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 0.34% and 7.74% for air cargo demand.     

Cybertran: A systems analysis solution to the high cost and low passenger appeal of conventional rail transportation systems

A new transportation system is described. CyberTran is a steel wheel on rail system designed to travel on elevated guideways, utilizing large numbers of 6 to 20 passenger automated vehicles weighing less than 10,000 pounds. The benefits from these light weight vehicles include dramatically reduced system cost and increased passenger appeal. The system described has been prototyped and tested at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, a U. S. Department of Energy Research and Development Laboratory.     

Long-term impact of the Shinkansen on rail and air demand: analysis with data from Northeast Japan

This paper analyses how the high-speed rail construction in Northeast Japan (Tohoku) has affected total demand and interregional travel patterns. We use annual interregional passenger data from 1989 to 2012 and apply regression analysis with the demand between Tokyo and the Tohoku prefectures as the dependent variable. We distinguish particularly between the ‘Full-’ and the ‘Mini-’ Shinkansen, where the latter are branch services running with reduced speed. We find that the ‘Full-Shinkansen’ quickly increases rail and total public transport trips and generates additional rail demand year on year. The ‘Mini-Shinkansen’ impacts are less pronounced. Furthermore, our analysis shows that the Shinkansen has shifted some demand from air to rail once it started operation and increased rail share gradually. We therefore suggest that predictions of demand impacts should carefully distinguish immediate from gradual impacts. We also discuss differences in regional demand in that not all prefectures have gained equally from Shinkansen construction.     

Evaluating impacts of coastal flooding on the transportation system using an activity-based travel demand model: a case study in Miami-Dade County,FL

Transportation - Recent climatic disasters have shown the vulnerability of transportation infrastructures against natural hazards. To understand the risk of coastal hazards on urban travel...     

Reducing the passenger travel time in practice by the automated construction of a robust railway timetable

Automatically generating timetables has been an active research area for some time, but the application of this research in practice has been limited. We believe this is due to two reasons. Firstly, some of the models in the literature impose artificial upper bounds on time supplements. This causes a high risk of generating infeasibilities. Secondly, some models that leave out these upper bounds often generate solutions that contain some very large time supplements because these supplements are not penalised in the objective function. The reason is that these objective functions often do not completely correspond to the true goal of a timetable. We solve both problems by minimising our objective function: total passenger travel time, expected in practice. Since this function evaluates and indirectly steers all time related decision variables in the system, we do not need to further restrict the ranges of any of these variables. As a result, our model does not suffer from infeasibilities generated by such artificial upper bounds for supplements.Furthermore, some measures are taken to significantly speed up the solver times of our model. These combined features result in our model being solved more quickly than previous models. As a result, our method can be used for timetabling in practice. We demonstrate our claims by optimising, in about two hours only, the timetable of all 196 hourly passenger trains in Belgium. Assuming primary delay-distributions with an average of 2% on the minima of each activity, the optimised timetable reduces expected passenger time in practice, as evaluated on the macroscopic level, by 3.8% during peak hours. This paper demonstrates that we added two important missing steps to make cyclic timetabling for passengers really useable in practice: (i) the addition of the objective function of expected passenger time in practice and (ii) the reduction of computation time by addition of well chosen additional constraints.     

Estimation of the value of travel time and of travel time reliability for heterogeneous drivers in a road network

Transportation - Travel time reliability has been recognized as an important factor in cost–benefit analysis in a transportation network. To estimate the benefit and cost of travel time...     

Understanding the role of the forecast-maker in overestimation forecasts of policy impacts: The case of Travel Demand Management policies

Forecasting the impacts of a proposed policy is an important component of the transportation planning and decision making process. Although scientific tools are often used in transportation forecasts, biases and, more specifically, overestimations of the expected impact are often observed. This study explores the correlations between forecast-maker’s characteristics and forecast bias creation and reduction. The study examines two transport-related policies aiming at the reduction of car use: telecommuting and carsharing. Both are Travel Demand Management (TDM) policies, which attract much attention from transport experts. We tested the extent to which the forecast-maker’s beliefs about the policy at stake affected the forecast bias. We found that attitudes and beliefs associates not only with overestimation bias but also with its reduction over time. We also tested the extent to which the forecast-maker’s affiliation, the performing institute and the publication type were correlated with the biases of the forecast and with the forecaster attitudes and beliefs. These characteristics are intuitively used by the forecast user as tools to assess the ‘objectivity’ of the forecast, but our analysis found no association between these characteristics and the forecast bias.     

Public transport demand estimation by calibrating a trip distribution-mode choice (TDMC) model from passenger counts: A case study in Bandung,Indonesia

A problem always found in developing countries is the lack of information required for short, medium and long term planning purposes due to money and time constraints. This becomes even more valuable for problems which require ‘quick-response’ treatment. A flexible model approach allows monitoring a long term plan in order to check its short term performance at regular intervals using easily-available data. If found necessary, changes to the plan may be evaluated and eventually implemented. For this reason, the approach is deemed appropriate for long term planning and project evaluation even in the case of rapid changes in land-use, socio-economic and population parameters usually occurs in most of developing countries. A key element of the approach is a system to update the forecasting model (in particular its trip distribution and mode choice elements) using low-cost and/or easily-available information. Traffic counts are particularly attractive to be used in developing countries for planning purposes. The estimation of public transport demand, particularly important for planning purposes, is an expensive and time consuming undertaking. The need for a low-cost method to estimate the public transport demand is therefore obvious. The objective of this paper is the development of methods and techniques for modelling the public transport demand using traffic (passenger) count information and other simple zonal-planning data. We will report on a family of aggregate model combined with a family of mode choice logit models which can be calibrated from traffic (passenger) counts and other low-cost data. The model examined was the Gravity (GR) model combined with the Multi-Nominal-Logit (MNL) model. Non-Linear-Least-Squares (NLLS) estimation method was used to calibrate the parameter of the combined model. The combined TDMC model and the calibration method have been implemented into a micro-computer package capable of dealing with the study area consisting of up to 300 zones, 3000 links and 6000 nodes. The approach has been tested using the 1988 Public Transport Data Survey in Bandung (Indonesia). The model was found to provide a reasonably good fit and the calibrated parameter can then be used for forecasting purposes. General conclusion regarding the advantageous and the applicability of the approach to other environments are given.     

From broken windows to a renovated research agenda: A review of the literature on vandalism and graffiti in the rail industry

The execution of vandalism and graffiti on rail property has a significant impact on rail authorities, the patronisation of rail services, expenditure, and the timely operation of services. There are also important social costs which stem from passengers feeling unsafe, not to mention the environmental costs of removing graffiti and repairing vandalism. In this review paper, we focus on the social, non-technical determinants of and deterrents to vandalism and graffiti in the rail industry. First, we consider the definitions of graffiti and vandalism that are often conflated. After providing some clarification on terminology, and proposing a media-centred approach to vandalism and graffiti, we consider various theorisations of the psychosocial determinants of vandalism and graffiti behaviour. We then turn to an empirical discussion of different technical and social, non-technical prevention programmes that have been trialled. With a focus on identifying what works and under what circumstances, we refer to international case studies of successful vandalism reduction initiatives from Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia. Based on a review of literature and practice, we outline a future research agenda to address vandalism and graffiti. We recommend lines of further research covering: theory, empirical data collection and practical initiatives. Specifically, we note the need for a trans-theoretical model of vandalism and graffiti, further ethnographic research and improved evaluation and benchmarking strategies. This is the first review dedicated to the topic of vandalism and graffiti in the rail industry and the first review of non-technical, social deterrents to vandalism and graffiti broadly.     

The German value of time and value of reliability study: the survey work

Transportation - In 2012 Germany’s Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) initiated several projects in preparation of the new Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan...     

Traveled distance,stock and fuel efficiency of private vehicles in Canada: price elasticities and rebound effect

This paper presents estimates of the rebound effect and other elasticities for the Canadian light-duty vehicle fleet using panel data at the provincial level from 1990 to 2004. We estimate a simultaneous three-equation model of aggregate demand for vehicle kilometers traveled, vehicle stock and fuel efficiency. Price and income elasticities obtained are broadly consistent with those reported in the literature. Among other results, an increase in the fuel price of 10% would reduce driving by ~2% in the long term and by 1% the average fuel consumption rate. Estimates of the short- and long-term rebound effects are ~8 and 20%, respectively. We also find that an increase in the gross domestic product per capita of 10% would cause an increase in driving distance of 2–3% and an increase of up to 4% in vehicle stock per adult. In terms of policy implications, our results suggest that: (1) the effectiveness of new fuel efficiency standards will be somewhat mitigated by the rebound effect and (2) fuel price increases have limited impacts on gasoline demand.