Arbeidstijdverkorting en vervoerpieken : een prognose voor 1990.

Reduction of working hours is seen as one of the policy instruments to fight unemployment, because as a consequence more people can enter the labour market. Reduction of working hours has its effects upon people's travel pattern not only because of the changed time budget of the workers. There will be more time for all sorts of activities and the distribution of these activities during the day can change. If these activities are outdoors they will cause more trips. What kind of impacts on peak hour traffic are to be expected? The calculations of these impacts are based on the assumption of a reduction of working hours of 12.5 per cent, which will be effected by a free friday afternoon or a one hour reduction per day. The travel pattern of all categories of workers in the netherlands as distinguished in the national travel survey (ovg) of 1983, is used as a starting-point for these calculations. Under the assumption that the travel behaviour in 1990 will not differ materially from that in 1983, the impacts are calculated for the overall travel pattern as a result of the increased number of workers on the whole and the changed numbers in the various categories. From these calculations it appears that the different variants of working-hours' reduction have a greater effect than those of filling-up rates. For a 7 hours working day with an unaltered production time travel is slightly more dispersed during the day. Therefore, in spite of the large increase in travel the increase of peak hour traffic is relatively small. For a free friday afternoon the traffic peak in the morning will be somewhat later and hence will cause more congestion. Around noon there is of course a significant increase and the decrease during the afternoon will only be slight. Apparently work trips are replaced by trips for other motives during that afternoon. Although at various times of the day the changes in traffic volumes are substantial, the effects on the capacity of the infrastructure are limited, because there is only a slight increase of peak hour traffic.