Project Description

A common feature of transport project evaluations is that the largest benefit of such projects is the value of the travel time savings arising from the project. This implicitly assumes that users of the system will use the time savings in a productive way, for which they would be willing to pay. However, recent attention has focussed on two issues surrounding this assumption. Firstly, the phenomenon of "induced travel" has been raised, whereby increases in transport capacity initially bring about an improvement in level of service offered to existing users, but this soon disappears as new travellers appear on the network. Secondly, a variety of studies around the world have suggested that travllers may have an implicit "travel time budget", and that time savings due to an improvement in the system will be used to make trips at other times and in other parts of the network.

The current project examines the extent to which travel time budgets exist in different Australian cities. Using a national survey of daily travel in all Australian capital cities, and in many regional cities, this project looks at the consistencies, and the differences, in average daily travel time across the various cities.