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Review and meta-analysis of U.K. time elasticities of travel demand

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Abstract

In contrast with reviews of values of time and price elasticities, the literature contains little by way of detailed reviews of travel time based choice and demand elasticities. This paper reports the most extensive meta-analysis of time-based demand elasticities yet undertaken, supplemented with a review of literature not previously in the public domain. The meta-analysis is based upon 427 direct elasticities covering travel time, generalised journey time (GJT) and service headway and drawn from 69 UK studies. The elasticities are found to vary, as expected, across attributes, and quite strong effects have been detected according to distance. We provide interesting insights into the relationship between long and short run elasticities and elasticities obtained from static models and choice models based on actual and hypothetical preferences. Significantly, the results seem to indicate that the duration for the long run demand impact to work through depends upon the periodicity of the model estimated. There is little variation apparent by journey purpose, source of the evidence, nor over time or by region/flow type, whilst travel time elasticities for high speed rail are not materially different from conventional contexts. The findings support some official elasticity recommendations and conventions but challenge others, and can be used to provide time-based elasticities where none exist or to assess new empirical evidence.

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Notes

  1. For reasons explained in “Insights not covered in meta-analysis” section, the meta data set does not include time elasticities for high speed rail. However, some key findings are reported in that section.

  2. Grey literature is unpublished work that generally cannot be easily found through conventional channels and has not been through formal peer review processes.

  3. Ticket sales data is a record of tickets sold for travel between origin and destination stations. In Great Britain, it is regarded to be an accurate guide of station-to-station travel and has supported a considerable amount of econometric analysis over the past 30 years.

  4. Whilst the time-series, cross-sectional and pooled aggregate ticket sales data are Revealed Preference, we reserve the use of the latter term for disaggregate data relating to individuals’ actual choices.

  5. So if we have four elasticities in a study, it contributes six observations (ratios) to the model. This will exaggerate the t ratios but it avoids the results depending upon which elasticity we take as the reference.

  6. The elasticities (η) are therefore specified in absolute form prior to taking logarithms.

  7. Akin to the suspicions that in the early literature there was under-reporting of non-work values of time that did not fit with the convention of being around 25% of the wage rate.

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Acknowledgment

The author is grateful to the Department for Transport for supporting this work, although all opinions expressed are those of the author, and to Pedro Abrantes for contributing to the data assembly. The extensive comments of four referees are also appreciated.

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  1. Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Mark Wardman

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  1. Mark Wardman
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Correspondence to Mark Wardman.

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Wardman, M. Review and meta-analysis of U.K. time elasticities of travel demand. Transportation 39, 465–490 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-011-9369-2

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