Value Of Travel Time

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2.4 Value Of Time
Value of time, in other words, the change in amount of the user’s willingness to pay for a unit change in travel time, is also one of the topics that have to be taken into account in determining toll rates. Value of travel time is one of the important factors for determining user’s route and time departure choices. Depending on the value that commuters set for their travel time, they make the decision to use a tolled road and reduce their travel time or to use a free alternative road and spend more time in traffic because of delays and travelling longer distances.
It is also important to distinguish user groups in traffic when considering value of travel times. Commuter value of time basically depends on travel time savings, …show more content…

One of the first studies for the evaluation of the value of travel time for commercial vehicles was published by Haning and McFarland (1963). Their analysis showed that commercial vehicle value of time should be greater than passenger car value of time even if no cargo is being carried. Kawamura (1999) defined a commercial vehicle value of travel time with using two different methods; first switching point analysis and second a random coefficient logit model. In his study, he analyzed the stated preference by conducting a survey on 77 trucking companies. Switching point analysis is a straightforward method in which the estimation of value of time based on the level of trade-off where the user chooses to switch from the cost option to free option. For example a traveler states that he/she would pay a toll for a given amount of time savings up to $10, then for all tolls above $10 he/she chooses the alternative road without a toll then the switching point for this individual is $10 and this would be the estimate of his/her value of time. In the second method, he fitted seven models by dividing the data into groups, by company ownership status and distance traveled. He first tried to estimate a logit model but the results are not suitable to generalize for every company therefore he fitted a random coefficient logit model that allows him to define different value of times for different types of companies. His findings showed that value of time of commercial vehicles has a mean of 23.4/hr and a standard deviation of $32/hr. At conclusion, he noted that the limited sample size bounds the study at a level that for further analysis a larger sample size is needed. Smalkoski and Levinson (2003) conducted a study for value of time determination for commercial vehicle operators in Minnesota. They fit a tobit model to the data they obtained

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