Time has been established as an expensive good. Transportation planning takes account of the time spent and its value. It is in the usual choice models such as destination-, route- or mode-choice models. Many of these choice models calculate a utility for each alternative and choose the one which shows the highest utility. Currently time is included in the utility function, as either the mean trip duration or the mean speed of vehicles. When people choose a transport mode they think not only consider the normal duration of a trip but also the reliability of the arrival time in the particular situation. Still the mentioned choice models generally do not contain a term concerning how reliable the alternatives are. One reason for not considering this item is the problem of how to measure and describe reliability for the users of transportation systems. A survey conducted in 2001 considered different methods of questioning as well as several types of presentation. For the study there was the opportunity to use addresses of respondents from a continuous Swiss survey, who had initially been contacted by the Swiss Federal Railways. Almost 1000 persons answered the questionnaire (a response rate of 65%). The core of the questionnaire includes three Stated-Preference-Experiments, two route choice and one combined route and mode choice. The results of the survey were modelled by using the MNL approach. For the covering abstract see ITRD E124693.
Abstract