2013 Session: 539

• Quantity and Quality of Productive Use of Transit Commuting Time: A Heckman Model
  Abstract: In North America, the average individual taking public transportation spends about 45 minutes commuting one way each day. This equates to about 398 hours per year and thus ways to reduce travel time are imperative. Rather than attempting to reduce travel time directly, changing the perspective of how commuting time is spent by improving the productive use of time provides a more cost effective solution. This paper explored and measured the extent that bus commuters are currently using their time actively during in-vehicle travel time and bus-stop waiting time. Heckman’s selection method was used to incorporate passengers who do not use their time actively to correct for sample selection bias and model the decision to use time actively as a two stage process. Average quantity and quality of primary activity time was found to be 66% and 20 minutes, respectively. The impact of ICT is predominant in almost all models tested, with degree of crowding and gender being a major factor in one’s choice to use time actively. Given that individuals are able to work productively during their transit commute, commuters will in hopes be more attracted to use transit by having this advantage over driving. If being productive does have an influence on an individual’s travel mode choice, there could be important implications on transportation modelling and demand management.
  Authors: Zhao, Jinhua; Lung, Allison; Guo, Zhan
  Authors: Zhao, Jinhua; Lung, Allison; Guo, Zhan
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Paper
  Subject: Planning and Forecasting
  Session: 539
  Paper Number: 13-1100
• Exploring the Dynamics in Travel Time Frontiers
  Abstract: The role of time in activity-travel behavior is of great interest to researchers because people are essentially using up time when they travel and participate in activities. Understanding people’s travel time expenditures and the factors contributing to such expenditures can provide valuable insights into activity-travel demand under a range of policy scenarios. While the travel time expenditure constitutes the actual time spent traveling in a day, it does not necessarily constitute the upper limit of the amount of time that people are able and willing to dedicate to travel. In this context, it may be feasible to define an unobserved travel time frontier which represents an upper bound (under usual conditions) on the amount of time that people are able to dedicate to travel. A stochastic frontier modeling approach is adopted to estimate the travel time frontier, as this is an unobserved behavioral characteristic. Models are estimated for a sample of households from four different years of the National Household Travel Survey in the United States to explore the dynamics of the frontier over a 25 year time period. It is found that frontier values are decreasing for workers and remaining largely steady for non-workers. This suggests that both the travel time frontier, and the expenditure that is influenced by the frontier, may be reaching levels of saturation despite productivity gains and other efficiencies afforded by mobile technology and other services. The findings are indicative of a slowdown in the growth of per-capita travel demand, at least in the foreseeable future.
  Authors: Volosin, Sarah Elia; Paul, Sanjay; Christian, Keith P.; Konduri, Karthik Charan; Pendyala, Ram M.
  Authors: Volosin, Sarah Elia; Paul, Sanjay; Christian, Keith P.; Konduri, Karthik Charan; Pendyala, Ram M.
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Paper
  Subject: Planning and Forecasting
  Session: 539
  Paper Number: 13-0981
• Exploring the Links Between Personal Networks, Time Use, and the Spatial Distribution of Social Contacts
  Abstract: Although the study of the role of the social context in travel behavior and activity patterns has recently gained attention, the empirical evidence supporting the relationship between social networks and the temporal and spatial characteristics of social activities is still limited. With this motivation, this paper studies the link between “longer term” (social networks) and “shorter term” (social activities) social decisions, by exploring the intertwined relationship between the individuals’ personal networks attributes, and the spatiotemporal characteristics of their daily social activities. The paper contributes to the literature by adding two key aspects to the study of the role of social networks on travel behavior: the social networks’ structure, and the spatiality of all individuals participating on the social activities.Based on data which link people’s personal networks and time use, and using a structural equation modeling approach, the paper studies the influence of individual and interactional attributes on the duration, distance, and number of people involved in social daily activities. The results show that aspects such as tie social closeness, gender and age similarity, and network density, help to understand social activity duration and distance, complementing traditional socio-demographic aspects such as income, occupation, and accessibility to services. In this way, socio-demographic attributes are not enough to explain the spatiotemporal dimension of daily activities which makes necessary to include variables related to the social context to explain with a higher level of accuracy both the duration and distance traveled to the activity.
  Authors: Moore, Jose; Carrasco, Juan Antonio; Tudela, Alejandro
  Authors: Moore, Jose; Carrasco, Juan Antonio; Tudela, Alejandro
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Paper
  Subject: Planning and Forecasting
  Session: 539
  Paper Number: 13-1999
• Incorporating Time Dynamics in Activity-travel Behavior Model: A Path Analysis of Changes in Activity and Travel Time Allocation with Life Cycle Events
  Abstract: The study of dynamics in activity and travel behavior is not a new research interest in transportation field. There are a few arenas in the dynamics which have been partially covered, yet some remain rather unexplored. Short term dynamics of activity and travel behavior are better understood than long term changes in the contemporary research. For instance, intra-household decision making, day-to-day dynamics of activity-travel generation and scheduling, out-of-home or in-home activity organization have been addressed by a number of studies. However, one can rarely find studies on the dynamics of time allocation in activities and travel related to life cycle events. This study contributes to the understanding of such long term dynamics. Using path analysis it shows the effect of several life cycle events on the changes in time allocation in activities and associated travel. Data were collected in the Netherlands in September 2011 using an event-based questionnaire survey, where the respondents were asked to report a weekly activity and travel schedule before and after the event. Results also show the inter dependencies between the types of activity and travel. We conclude that life cycle events have significant impact on changes in time allocation for activities and travel. The effects are varied in direction, intensity and existence according to the type of event and the type of activity. The findings contribute to the specification of dynamics in activity-travel time allocation and predicting the rapid and far reaching changes in addition to the day-to-day dynamics.
  Authors: Sharmeen, Fariya; Arentze, Theo A.; Timmermans, Harry J.P.
  Authors: Sharmeen, Fariya; Arentze, Theo A.; Timmermans, Harry J.P.
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Paper
  Subject: Planning and Forecasting
  Session: 539
  Paper Number: 13-2572
• The Revealed Willingness to Pay for Leisure: The Link Between Structural and Microeconomic Models of Time Use
  Abstract: There are many approaches to explain time allocation to activities as a function of independent variables; their purpose is to study time use and to understand and measure values of time. The idea of this paper is to present a new theoretical construct, the revealed willingness to pay for leisure (RWPL) as a link between two powerful time use models: the microeconomic utility theory approach and the structural equations modeling method (SEM). To do this, the theoretical formulation of each approach is presented and enriched using previous experience; then using a database created from the Origin Destination Survey of 2001 in the city of Santiago, Chile, the two approaches are used to calculate the values of times. We estimate a structural equations model that keeps the generic features of the approach as applied to time use modeling, but improves incorporating expenses as well as activities and socioeconomic variables, following Konduri et al (2011). The endogenous variables are working time, recreation time and recreational expenses. The explanatory variables are age, income, committed (unavoidable and irreducible) time and committed expenses, inspired by the microeconomic model. The new equation on expenses in a leisure activity permits the calculation of a revealed willingness to pay for leisure (RWPL), which we show to be theoretically different from the value of leisure under a microeconomic formulation.Then we estimate a system of equations for working time, the time allocated at home and the expenses in “out of home entertainment” following the microeconomic model of Jara-Díaz and Guerra (2003) that has the wage rate, committed time and committed expenses as explanatory variables. This is done for different segments of the population according to age, gender and zone of residence. This model permits the calculation of the values of leisure and work. The main conclusions are that the SEM does not permit the calculation of the full value of leisure and that the microeconomic approach needs an explicit constraint relating goods consumption and time use.
  Authors: Jara-Diaz, Sergio; Astroza, Sebastian
  Authors: Jara-Diaz, Sergio; Astroza, Sebastian
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Paper
  Subject: Planning and Forecasting
  Session: 539
  Paper Number: 13-3111
• Quantity and Quality of Productive Use of Transit Commuting Time: A Heckman Model
  Authors: Lung, Allison
  Authors: Lung, Allison
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Presentation
  Subject: Planning and Forecasting
  Session: 539
  Paper Number: 13-1100
• Exploring the Links Between Personal Networks, Time Use, and the Spatial Distribution of Social Contacts
  Authors: Carrasco, Juan
  Authors: Carrasco, Juan
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Presentation
  Subject: Planning and Forecasting
  Session: 539
  Paper Number: 13-1999
• Incorporating Time Dynamics in Activity-travel Behavior Model: A Path Analysis of Changes in Activity and Travel Time Allocation with Life Cycle Events
  Authors: Sharmeen, Fariya
  Authors: Sharmeen, Fariya
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Presentation
  Subject: Planning and Forecasting
  Session: 539
  Paper Number: 13-2572
• Exploring the Dynamics in Travel Time Frontiers
  Authors: Volosin, Sarah
  Authors: Volosin, Sarah
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Presentation
  Subject: Planning and Forecasting
  Session: 539
  Paper Number: 13-0981
• The Revealed Willingness to Pay for Leisure: The Link Between Structural and Microeconomic Models of Time Use
  Authors: Jara-Diaz, Sergio
  Authors: Jara-Diaz, Sergio
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Presentation
  Subject: Planning and Forecasting
  Session: 539
  Paper Number: 13-3111