What Do Passengers Do During Travel Time? Structured Observations on Buses and Trains

In the last decade the number of rail passenger journeys in Great Britain has increased by half and car trips per person are down by a tenth. Meanwhile there has been significant growth in internet use and ownership of smartphones. Travel patterns are changing in tandem with adoption of digital age innovations. At a time when Britain is also poised to invest tens of billions of pounds in high speed rail, this paper examines how the experience of rail Historically, transport analysis has stemmed from the premise that travel is a derived demand -people are undertaking journeys at a cost to them (in terms of time and money in particular)in order to realise benefit from the activities they engage in upon reaching their destinations.Relative costs between different options for travel mode, route and destination have been important considerations in attempts to interpret and model travel behaviour. Treatment of journey experience in such contexts has tended to be in terms of journey comfort, convenience, reliability and safety, alongside time and cost. There has been little interest in accounting for how people's travel time itself is used or valued within transport analysis. This may seem rather surprising given that for England in 2014, the average person spent on average one hour per day travelling (DfT, 2014a). This amounts to a daily resource of 54 million hours for the population of England as a whole -or some 62 million hours for the population of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales).However, in the last ten or so years (stemming from earlier work by Mokhtarian and Growing uncertainty about the future of car travel -In a number of countries with developed economies and mature transport systems, something peculiar has happened over the ten year period -the historic growth in total car travel (total distance travelled) has not continued and car travel per person per year (measured by distance) has in some cases been in decline (Goodwin, 2012; Goodwin and Van Denker, 2013). Attention is now being devoted to better understanding the possible factors contributing to this phenomenon. These include limited road capacity in cities, a trend in urbanisation, fewer young people learning to drive and growing reliance on digital connectivity in society -as well as economic conditions. There is no professional consensus on whether the future trend in car travel will be one of growth, plateau or decline (Lyons and Goodwin, 2014). Alongside this phenomenon (which has been given the shorthand term 'peak car') there is also now much (hyped) consideration of the prospects for a future of the car as a self-driving vehicle. This sits alongside the notion of a 'sharing economy' emerging (Botsman and Rogers, 2010) in which people are more inclined to share the use of resources including vehicles. This might lead to a greater share of car use experience being as a passenger rather than as a driver.In tandem with the developments above, questions designed by the first two authors of this explores what the implications m...

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“…van de Waerden et al, 2009;Russell et al, 2011;Ettema et al, 2012;Gripsrud and Hjortol, 2012;Frie et al, 2015).…”

Section: 1unclassified

Changing times – A decade of empirical insight into the experience of rail passengers in Great Britain

Lyons

Jain

Weir

2016

Journal of Transport Geography

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“…Nevertheless, their research also shows that the importance passengers place on using mobile devices is small when compared to other factors, such as schedule convenience. Russell et al (2011) observed bus and train riders in New Zealand, concluding that bus travelers are less apt to use mobile devices than train riders.…”

Section: Relevant Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The S-Curve of Technological Adoption: Mobile Communication Devices on Commuter Trains in the Chicago Region, 2010–2015

Schwieterman¹,

Fischer²

2017

JPT

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“…[14,19,37,43,44,49,53,60]. Travel time can be seen as time that has been saved, or a pleasant time where the vehicle becomes a living space in its own right [49,51] and during which a variety of activities can be done, thus making it worthwhile -even productive [16,38,51,59].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intensive travel time: an obligation or a choice?

Joly

Vincent‐Geslin

2016

Eur. Transp. Res. Rev.

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This paper explores what prompts some individuals to spend a significant amount of time travelling. In the literature, travel time tends to be regarded as useless, unproductive time and, in some cases, as the worst time of the day. The actual behaviour of intensive travellers challenges this view of travel time. A mixed approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methodologies was adopted. A survival analysis of daily travel time in eight European cities gives a quantitative definition of intensive travellers. Qualitative interviews with intensive travellers explore the various dimensions of choice and/or obligation that are responsible for these extreme daily travel times. The results show that roughly 20 % of the individuals in the sample for each city have long travel times (more than 100 min a day). The quantitative analysis also suggests that the behaviour of these individuals is atypical and cannot be explained solely by the characteristics that are considered in standard travel surveys. A qualitative sociological approach supplements the quantitative approach and illustrates that the allocation of travel time is not only determined by the activity pursued at the destination or the mode of transport but also by other factors such as personal beliefs and the perception of travel time. The positive perception of travel time as time to be used constructively or enjoyed influences the decision to travel intensively and, above all, contributes to its long-term acceptability. A number of political issues depend on travel behaviour and therefore, to some extent, on time management. New patterns of behaviour with regard to time management help explain the expansion in the range of individual travel.

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What Do Passengers Do During Travel Time? Structured Observations on Buses and Trains

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Cited by 65 publications

References 24 publications

Changing times – A decade of empirical insight into the experience of rail passengers in Great Britain

Changing times – A decade of empirical insight into the experience of rail passengers in Great Britain

The S-Curve of Technological Adoption: Mobile Communication Devices on Commuter Trains in the Chicago Region, 2010–2015

Intensive travel time: an obligation or a choice?

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