IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transa/v39y2005i2-3p257-276.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Travel time use in the information age

Author

Listed:
  • Lyons, Glenn
  • Urry, John

Abstract

This paper, focused primarily on UK data and debates, considers the potential significance of travel time use within past, present and future patterns of mobility. In transport scheme appraisal, savings in travel time typically represent a substantial proportion of the benefits of a scheme--benefits used to justify its often enormous financial costs. Such benefits are founded on the assumption that travel time is unproductive, wasted time in-between 'real' activities and which should be minimised. Travel demand analysis treats travel time and activity time as separate, albeit acknowledging an interdependency. The paper challenges these approaches by exploring how travel time can be, and is, being used 'productively' as activity time, and what enhancements to time use might be emerging in the 'information age'. Such undermining of the division between activities and travelling, and between activity time and travel time, may have major implications for future levels of mobility, for the modal distribution of travel, for the validity of current transport appraisal methodology and for the analysis of travelling within the information age. These issues are considered.

Suggested Citation

  • Lyons, Glenn & Urry, John, 2005. "Travel time use in the information age," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 39(2-3), pages 257-276.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:39:y:2005:i:2-3:p:257-276
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965-8564(04)00097-7
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mokhtarian, Patricia L. & Salomon, Ilan, 2001. "How derived is the demand for travel? Some conceptual and measurement considerations," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 695-719, September.
    2. Salomon, Ilan & Mokhtarian, Patricia, 1998. "What Happens When Mobility-Inclined Market Segments Face Accessibility-Enhancing Policies?," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt2x75525j, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    3. Jarach, David, 2001. "The evolution of airport management practices: towards a multi-point, multi-service, marketing-driven firm," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 119-125.
    4. Schafer, Andreas & Victor, David G., 2000. "The future mobility of the world population," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 171-205, April.
    5. Mimi Sheller & John Urry, 2000. "The City and the Car," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(4), pages 737-757, December.
    6. Schafer, Andreas, 1998. "The global demand for motorized mobility," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 455-477, August.
    7. Schwanen, Tim & Dijst, Martin, 2002. "Travel-time ratios for visits to the workplace: the relationship between commuting time and work duration," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 573-592, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tapio, Petri, 2005. "Towards a theory of decoupling: degrees of decoupling in the EU and the case of road traffic in Finland between 1970 and 2001," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 137-151, March.
    2. Mokhtarian, Patricia L. & Chen, Cynthia, 2004. "TTB or not TTB, that is the question: a review and analysis of the empirical literature on travel time (and money) budgets," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 38(9-10), pages 643-675.
    3. Longden, Thomas, 2016. "The Regularity and Irregularity of Travel: an Analysis of the Consistency of Travel Times Associated with Subsistence, Maintenance and Discretionary Activities," ET: Economic Theory 243150, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    4. Tang, Jia & Mokhtarian, Patricia L. & Zhen, Feng, 2020. "How do passengers allocate and evaluate their travel time? Evidence from a survey on the Shanghai–Nanjing high speed rail corridor, China," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    5. Joly, I., 2011. "Test of the relation between travel and activities times : different representations of a demand derived from activity participation," Working Papers 201103, Grenoble Applied Economics Laboratory (GAEL).
    6. Iragaël Joly, 2006. "The role of travel time budgets – Representation of a demand derived from activity participation," Post-Print halshs-00181431, HAL.
    7. Hess, Stephane & Bierlaire, Michel & Polak, John W., 2005. "Estimation of value of travel-time savings using mixed logit models," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 39(2-3), pages 221-236.
    8. Handy, Susan L, 2002. "Accessibility- vs. Mobility-Enhancing Strategies for Addressing Automobile Dependence in the U.S," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt5kn4s4pb, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    9. Ory, David T, 2007. "Structural Equation Modeling of Relative Desired Travel Amounts," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt8mj659fp, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    10. Mokhtarian, Patricia L & Salomon, Ilan & S, Lothlorien, 2001. "Understanding the Demand for Travel: It's Not Purely 'Derived'," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt5bh2d8mh, University of California Transportation Center.
    11. Mokhtarian, Patricia L., 2020. "Wenn die Telekommunikation den Verkehr so gut ersetzen kann, warum gibt es dann immer mehr Staus?," Forschungsberichte der ARL: Aufsätze, in: Reutter, Ulrike & Holz-Rau, Christian & Albrecht, Janna & Hülz, Martina (ed.), Wechselwirkungen von Mobilität und Raumentwicklung im Kontext gesellschaftlichen Wandels, volume 14, pages 167-195, ARL – Akademie für Raumentwicklung in der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft.
    12. Van Ommeren, Jos & Rietveld, Piet, 2005. "The commuting time paradox," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 437-454, November.
    13. Haugen, Katarina & Vilhelmson, Bertil, 2013. "The divergent role of spatial access: The changing supply and location of service amenities and service travel distance in Sweden," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 10-20.
    14. Girod, Bastien & van Vuuren, Detlef P. & Deetman, Sebastiaan, 2012. "Global travel within the 2°C climate target," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 152-166.
    15. Longden, Thomas, 2014. "Travel intensity and climate policy: The influence of different mobility futures on the diffusion of battery integrated vehicles," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 219-234.
    16. Singh, Sanjay Kumar, 2006. "Future mobility in India: Implications for energy demand and CO2 emission," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 13(5), pages 398-412, September.
    17. Meyer, I. & Leimbach, M. & Jaeger, C.C., 2007. "International passenger transport and climate change: A sector analysis in car demand and associated CO2 emissions from 2000 to 2050," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 6332-6345, December.
    18. Milakis, Dimitris & van Wee, Bert, 2018. "“For me it is always like half an hour”: Exploring the acceptable travel time concept in the US and European contexts," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 113-122.
    19. Thomas Longden, 2016. "The Regularity and Irregularity of Travel: an Analysis of the Consistency of Travel Times Associated with Subsistence, Maintenance and Discretionary Activities," Working Papers 2016.49, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    20. Ory, David Terrance, 2007. "Structural Equation Modeling of Relative Desired Travel Amounts," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt7rb3x52m, University of California Transportation Center.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:39:y:2005:i:2-3:p:257-276. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/547/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.