TRACE is a comprehensive research programme, carried out by a consortium of European consultants and Universities (ARPA from Italy, Hague Consulting Group from the Netherlands, Heusch/Boesefeldt from Germany, Stratec from Belgium and the University of Cergy-Pontoise from France), which started in January 1998 with the financial support of the European Commission (DGVII). The objectives of TRACE are: (i) to understand and to demonstrate the relationship between travel costs and time and the demand for car travel, both in short and long term; (ii) to produce a comprehensive review of empirical and modelling evidence of time and cost elasticities and value of time for both short and long term futures; and ) to produce an easy to use Elasticity Handbook to include values for elasticities for a range of ‘prototypical contexts’, for an assessment of first order impacts on car travel demand at different planning levels. In order to achieve these objectives, in the first phase of the project, a large-scale review of available evidence concerning elasticities of private car travel demand with respect to time and cost changes has been carried out. This first phase also includes evidence on the value of time. The focus is on countries which are member or associate member of the European Union, and on recent studies (1985 and later). In later phases of the TRACE project, new runs with national and regional traffic models will be used to yield more evidence on private road time and cost elasticities in many different contexts. These phases also contain the development of a sketch planning model, rooted in the existing traffic models, which can be used to yield elasticities in a fast and user-friendly way for contexts not covered by the existing models. The first phase (literature research) of the TRACE project consists of three Work Packages: WP1: Assembly and review of existing empirical evidence on elasticities of time and cost; leading partner: Heusch/Boesefeldt (H/B); other partners: HCG and ARPA (Cascetta); WP2: Assembly and review of existing modelling evidence on elasticities of time and cost; leading partner HCG, other partners: H/B and ARPA; WP3: Assembly and review of existing evidence on value-of-time (VOT); leading partner: HCG, other partner: H/B. This report is Deliverable 1 (D1) of the TRACE project. It describes elasticities found in the literature survey, for the short and the long term and for a great number of European countries, as well as evidence found on the value of travel time in these countries. This report is based on three technical reports, which give the detailed outcomes of WP1, WP2 and WP3 respectively. In Chapter 2 of this report some relevant definitions and distinctions with regards to the elasticity concept will be provided. A summary of the outcomes for elasticities found in the literature is given in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 contains a number of definitions and distinctions which are relevant for the value of time. In Chapter 5 the main outcomes for the value of travel time will be presented. More detailed results from the literature survey can be found in the Appendices. (A)
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