An important recently revived travel hypothesis postulates fixed travel time and money budgets. This theory argues that in countries with high car ownership, such as Australia, household travel costs as a share of household final consumption expenditure remain roughly constant at about 10- 15%. It further claims that daily travel times are constant at about 70 minutes. The present analysis shows, however, that in recent decades in most OECD countries although travel's share of household income has been fairly constant, daily travel times have steadily grown, and that for both time and money budgets, large variations are found for sub-national groups. As any decline in the relative importance of car travel could also alter travel money budgets, neither fixed travel time nor money budgets should be assumed in transport planning or project evaluation. Nevertheless, data on travel time and money outlays for sub-national populations can be very useful for transport planning and research. (a).
Samenvatting