01340180

Component

There has been discussion now for four decades on the issue of whether or not people around the world have a constant travel-time budget. Most of the research into travel-time budgets has used large aggregate data sets and has shown that average amounts of time spent travelling are on the order of 1 to 1½ hours. There have also been a number of studies that have failed to find evidence of constancy in travel-time budgets. In this paper, the authors report on some preliminary research that uses data from a panel of 50 households that provided global positioning systems (GPS) data for a period of up to 28 days. In the research to date, the analysis deals only with evidence from one wave of the panel, to determine whether there is evidence over a period of one week of stability in travel-time expenditures. The data set provides very precise times of travel for each person for up to 28 consecutive days of travel. The analysis looks at travel time expenditure on a daily basis per person and then aggregates this to a week. The issue of regression to the mean is also considered and reviewed and conclusions are drawn that it is not an issue in this analysis. Evidence is found of some stability in travel time expenditures, especially when data are averaged over a two-week period.

01329018

11-2318

English

16p

2011

Transportation Research Board 90th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures (7) ; References (25) ; Tables (2)

Commuters; Data collection; Expenditures; Global Positioning System; Households; Peak hour traffic; Public transit; Stability analysis; Travel budgets; Travel time

Household travel surveys

Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2011 Paper #11-2318

TRIS, TRB

Feb 17 2011 6:08PM