Valuing the time spent in transit for individual items or loads of freight is an element that is omitted by most evaluations and economic assessments of transport proposals and policies in Australia. Such delays - and indeed the practical value of reliability - are of utility to the shippers and the receivers, but do not appear directly in vehicle operating costs and person travel times. As a result benefits generated by improvements from road investment and traffic management are understated and expenditure decisions biased towards passenger movements. The present paper applies Contextual Stated Preference (CSP) methods and the associated multinomial logit models to estimate the value of such factors from an Australian survey of freight shippers using road freight transport in 1998. An illustration of the significance of these results is the estimated value of $1.40 per hour per pallet for metropolitan multidrop freight services: potentially a substantial value not currently consistently tracked or utilised in transport evaluation procedures in Australia. (A)
Samenvatting