We estimate the value of time savings, different cycling environments and additional benefits in cost-benefit analysis of cycling investments. Cyclists' value of travel time savings turns out to be high, considerably higher than the value of time savings on alternative modes. Cyclists also value other improvements highly, such as separated bicycle lanes. As to additional benefits of cycling improvements in the form of health and reduced car traffic, our results do not support the notion that these will be a significant part in a cost-benefit analysis. Bicyclists seem to take health largely into account when making their travel choices, implying that it would be double-counting to add total health benefits to the analysis once the consumer surplus has been correctly calculated. As to reductions in car traffic, our results indicate that the cross-elasticity between car and cycle is low, and hence benefits from traffic reductions will be small. However, the valuations of improved cycling speeds and comfort are so high that it seems likely that improvements for cyclists are cost-effective compared to many other types of investments, without having to invoke second-order, indirect effects. In other words, our results suggest that bicycle should be viewed as a competitive mode of travel and not primarily as a means to achieve improved health or reduced car traffic.
The standard method of estimating the value of travel time variability for use in policy appraisal is to estimate the parameters of a reduced-form utility function, where some measure of travel time variability (such as the standard deviation) is included. A problem with this approach is that the obtained valuation will in general depend on the standardized travel time distribution, and hence cannot be transferred from one context to another. A recently suggested remedy of this problem has been to estimate a scheduling model, which in theory is transferrable, and use the implied reduced-form to derive valuations for use in appraisal. In this paper we estimate both a scheduling model and the implied reduced-form model, using stated choice data. The valuation of travel time variability implied by the scheduling model turns out to be substantially smaller than what is obtained from a reduced-form model estimated on the same sample. The results suggest that the scheduling model does not capture all of the disutility arising from travel time variability. Hence, although it can be shown that scheduling and reduced-form models are "theoretically equivalent", that hypothesized equivalence is not reflected in the empirical evidence. We speculate that the derivation of reduced-form models from an underlying scheduling model omits two essential features: first, the notion of an exogenously fixed "preferred arrival time" neglects the fact that most activities can be rescheduled given full information about the travel times in advance, and second, disutility may be derived from uncertainty as such, in the form of anxiety, decisions costs or costs for having contingency plans. We also report our estimates of the valuation of travel time variability for public transit trips, for use in applied appraisal.
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