Valuing Conveniencein Public Transport
Roundtable Summary and Conclusions

02

Discussion Paper 2014 • 02
Mark Wardman

University of Leeds, United Kingdom

Valuing convenience in public transport

Discussion Paper No. 2014-02

ROUNDTABLE SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONSMark WARDMAN
University of Leeds, United Kingdom

April 2014

THE INTERNATIONAL TRANSPORT FORUM
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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORTTABLE OF CONTENTSFOREWORD................................................................................................................. 5
1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 5
1.1 Aims and Needs ............................................................................................... 5
1.2 Scope.............................................................................................................. 6
1.3 The Potential Benefits of Transferability ............................................................... 7
1.4 Approach ......................................................................................................... 8
1.5 Structure ......................................................................................................... 8
2. BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................ 9
2.1 What is Convenience? ....................................................................................... 9
2.2 Why Do We Care About Convenience? ............................................................... 11
2.3 Official Multiplier Values .................................................................................. 14
3. MEASURING AND VALUING CONVENIENCE............................................................... 20
3.1 Measuring Convenience ................................................................................... 20
3.2 How Do We Value Convenience? ....................................................................... 23
4. REVIEW OF EVIDENCE ........................................................................................... 26
4.1 Walk and Wait Time Multipliers ......................................................................... 26
4.2 Departure Time Convenience .............................................................................. 33
4.3 Interchange ................................................................................................... 37
4.4 Reliability ...................................................................................................... 40
4.5 Crowding Convenience .................................................................................... 45
4.6 The Convenience of Information ....................................................................... 49
4.7 Summary ...................................................................................................... 57
5. THE RESEARCH AGENDA ........................................................................................ 59
5.1 Adding to the Evidence Base ............................................................................ 59
5.2 Monitoring, Validating and Ex-Post Analysis ....................................................... 62
6. POLICY IMPLICATIONS .......................................................................................... 63
7. CONCLUDING REMARKS ........................................................................................ 65
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................. 65

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORTVALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Glossary of Terms:

4

GC:

Generalised Cost, reflecting the quantified disutility of a travel option
in money unitsGT:

Generalised Time which is Generalised Cost converted into time units

IVT:

In-Vehicle Time

Late:

Mean lateness on schedule

OVT:

Out-of-Vehicle TimeRP:

Revealed Preference

RR:

Reliability Ratio (Relative value of the standard deviation of travel
time and mean travel time)SD:

Standard Deviation of Travel Time (or Lateness)

SDE:

Schedule Delay Early which is the mean amount of arriving early
relative to the preferred arrival time

SDL:

Schedule Delay Late which is the mean amount of arriving laterelative to the preferred arrival time

SP:

Stated Preference

WTP:

Willingness-to-Pay

Summary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 2014

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORTFOREWORD

The experience of transport systems users, in terms of comfort, reliability, safety andabove all convenience, is critical in determining demand for transport services, at least when
there is a choice of alternative ways to travel. Convenience is one of the strongest attractionsof the private car for passenger transport. For users of public transport, convenience is also
clearly important but not always clearly defined and not often measured in designingtransport systems or monitoring their operating performance. In many situations, anincrease in public transport convenience reduces the unit costs of travel (euros/dollars perhour or cents per minute) and so provides benefits equivalent to an increase in travel speed.
This report focuses on convenience and its importance to the user experience. It reviews
operational definitions of convenience, evidence for the willingness of users to pay forconvenience and the use of indicators to assess and improve the convenience of public
transport, with a view to making it more effective and more competitive.

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1

Aims and Needs

It is straightforward that making public transport more convenient raises the probability
that it will be chosen over alternative transport modes and can raise overall transportdemand. It is less straightforward but crucial to understand how users value convenience
compared to other characteristics of service, and to produce operational and measurable
indicators of convenience. The International Transport Forum therefore convened aroundtable meeting in September 2013 to review international experience with measurementof convenience in order to establish best practice and extract common messages. It also
looked into practical use of convenience measures in cost-benefit analysis and in
performance measurement.
This report summarises the issues discussed at the roundtable and aims to consolidate
evidence on the valuation of public transport convenience for the broader benefit of thetransport community of policy makers, operators, academics and consultants, and ultimately
public transport users.
The Roundtable was of the view that the practice of accommodating convenience intransport planning, forecasting, policy and appraisal across the world is very variable andoften absent. This document serves to:Highlight the importance of convenience;

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Provide empirical evidence that can be used to improve services;
Serve as a stimulus to operators, planners and policy makers to take convenience
attributes into account in their decision making;Encourage research in the area to derive locally relevant parameters;
Improve understanding in contexts where evidence already exists through additional
research that provides more detailed or better insights.

Where cost-benefit analysis has been used to appraise transport investment projects,
the value of in-vehicle time (IVT) has historically dominated, not least because it was thefirst element of time to be valued in money terms, and remains the single most importantparameter in appraisal. This is also because of the dominance of car schemes in transport
appraisal where there is no need for convenience terms. As a result, there have over many
years been numerous reviews of the value of in-vehicle travel time savings, (Hensher, 1976;
MVA et al., 1987; Lawson, 1989; Waters, 1992; Wardman, 1998, 2001, 2004; Miller, 1996;
de Jong et al., 1998, 2004; Booz Allen and Hamilton, 2000; Bickel et al., 2004; Shires andde Jong, 2009; Abrantes and Wardman, 2011; Douglas and Wallis, 2013; Wardman et al.,2013).
In many countries that conduct appraisal of transport investments and policies, public
transport has at some times in the past been seen as a ‘private’ good with fare-box revenue
for which financial appraisal is sufficient, in contrast to the provision of road capacity that isessentially a ‘public’ good which requires a broader cost-benefit analysis.
The world has now moved on and there is broader acceptance that public transport
schemes should be appraised in a similar fashion to highway schemes 1 which therefore
brings into play a broader range of attributes that are critically important in determining theattractiveness of public transport. In addition, and importantly, there is now a large body ofevidence relating to the valuation of the drivers of convenience. However, it is not clear thatbest use is being made of evidence to identify and justify improvements in public transport
convenience.
An overview and review of travellers’ willingness to pay valuations for convenience
improvements is therefore timely and it is this purpose that this document seeks to serve.
We do not aim to provide recommendations but rather summarise the evidence so that:



1.2

It provides a useful resource for planners and public transport operators;
It serves as a benchmark against which to assess emerging evidence;
It inspires both greater inclusion of convenience measures in appraisal and further
research to provide local parameters or improved insights.
Scope

A discussion of what is meant by convenience is provided in section 2.1 below. Suffice tosay at the outset that the Roundtable took as its remit the following time-related attributes
other than IVT that impact on the convenience of public transport:


1.

6

The inconvenience of public transport not being immediately accessible and available,
which might be termed Out-of-Vehicle Time (OVT). This covers:

However, we note that highway scheme appraisals rarely include ‘analogous multipliers’, suchas might account for time spent in congested as opposed to free flow traffic or represent
different qualities of road surface.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT‒ Walking time to, from and during a public transport journey‒ Access to public transport modes more generally that is not necessarily walking‒ Waiting time, either at the origin point or subsequently transferring between
services or modes
The inconvenience of not being able to travel at the desired time. This covers:‒ Differences to and variations upon desired departure times‒ Service FrequencyThe inconvenience of having to interchange, independent of the walk and wait time
involved.



The inconvenience of unreliable services and arriving late.



The inconvenience of the absence of good user information relating to factors such as
wayfinding, real time arrivals, timetables, payment options and the like.



The inconvenience of crowding and having to stand and the inconvenience of thelonger journey times that can stem from crowding.

Whilst other elements of inconvenience could be added, there are practical limitations tothe scope of the Roundtable discussion and the convenience factors covered are considered
to be the most important aspects.
Although valuations can be used in forecasting the demand consequences of changes inconvenience, that is not the focus of this document which is instead focused firmly upon
travellers’ willingness to pay for more convenient public transport services suitable for use incost-benefit analysis for appraisal purposes.
1.3

The Potential Benefits of Transferability

Valuations of convenience factors such as walking and waiting are typically expressed inequivalent units of IVT rather than as monetary values. Thus if walking time savings are
regarded to be twice as important as the same amount of IVT savings, the walk time
multiplier is two.
An attraction of working with time multipliers is that they are potentially much moretransferable across different contexts and cultures than are monetary values that suffer fromthe vagaries of the currency markets, different income levels and living standards, and theincome levels of the travelling public differing from average income levels which can beparticularly acute in less developed economies. Multipliers are also far more readilyinterpreted and assessed and there is now a significant amount of evidence relating to them.
Money values of IVT exist in numerous countries, either as the outcome of specificstudies or, more importantly, because they can be proxied by reference to wage rates sincemuch value of IVT evidence is expressed in terms of the wage rate. It is then astraightforward matter to obtain the monetary valuations of the convenience variables
needed by cost-benefit analysis by applying the multipliers to the money value of IVT used.
In addition to the direct or deduced evidence on values of IVT in many countries, somehave evidence on convenience multipliers, most usually for walking and waiting time. Even

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

then it remains useful to assess the values used against other evidence, of which there is
now a significant amount, and also to extend coverage to elements of convenience for which
local values do not exist.
1.4

Approach

We are not here claiming that there have been no reviews of convenience attributes,
although there is little on the scale of the review of IVT values. Notable reviews exist ofmultipliers associated with walk and wait time (McKnight, 1982, Waters, 1992; Wardman
2004; Australian Transport Council 2006; Abrantes and Wardman, 2011, Wardman, 2013),
travel time variability (Noland and Polak, 2002; Tseng, 2008; Li et al., 2010; Carrion andLevinson, 2012; Wardman and Batley, 2014), headway (Wardman, 2004, 2013; AustralianTransport Council, 2006; Wallis et al., 2013), and crowding (Li and Hensher, 2011; Wardman
and Whelan, 2011; Wallis et al., 2013).
We recognise that the literature containing specific results on the multipliers of interest
here is now large and that it is clearly far beyond the scope of this piece of work to review it.
But neither is it particularly authoritative to cover an arbitrary selection of studies that haveprovided evidence whilst identifying a selection of what might be regarded to be the ‘key’
studies in the area can be a subjective matter.
The approach we have adopted is to build upon the review evidence that exists and thento draw upon specific, readily accessed, material to provide supplementary detail on specificissues.
1.5

Structure

Section 2 provides background discussion on what is convenience in the public transport
market, clearly setting out what we regard to be the principal convenience variables and why
they are important, along with a summary and discussion of current official recommendations
and other guidance.
In section 3, we address the issue of measuring public transport convenience variables,
how we go about including them in a measure of the attractiveness of public transport andhow these inclusions are valued in terms of travellers’ willingness to pay for improvements.
Section 4 provides an overview of empirical evidence for multipliers of walk and wait
time, displacement time and headway, transfer penalties, reliability, crowding andinformation provision. We here make use of existing review material supplemented withstudies that provide detailed insights.
Section 5 deals with the future research agenda whilst section 6 considers the policy
implications. Concluding remarks are set out in section 7.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

2. BACKGROUND

2.1

What is Convenience?

Convenience is related to ‘absence of effort’ in utilizing transport services that are ‘fit for
purpose’ in the way they are operated. The concept is narrower than service quality, andtransport analysts have long distinguished cost, time, convenience and comfort, where thelatter has to do with how pleasant the trip is (Hensher, 1975). There is, however, no generalconsensus of what convenience represents in a public transport context, and the term is usedeven without explicit definition. Nor is it unknown that studies that review a large amount ofinternational valuation evidence do not specify what convenience is or indeed rarely use theterm (VTPI, 2009; Wardman, 2013).
This lack of clarity on what precisely is convenience is not confined to transport. In the
broader marketing literature, and comparatively recently, Berry et al. (2002) stated that:“Convenience is acknowledged to be increasingly important to consumers, yet no
known research has defined the service convenience construct or examined how it isevaluated. Although most researchers and managers consider service convenience toinvolve more than locational proximity or hours of operation, the specific types ofservice convenience have not been established”.
They go on to define five types of convenience: decision convenience, accessconvenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience and post-benefit convenience. At
least the first four resonate closely with factors underpinning the attractiveness of public
transport.
Claffey (1964) provides one of the earliest definitions of convenience in a travel context.
It is stated as being “greatest when users least have to adjust their personal plans and living
habits to use transit, and when the difficulties of getting to transit stations and aboard transit
vehicles are minimized”.
Another early study (Stopher et al., 1974) pointed out what has become something of arecurring theme of varied definitions of convenience across studies, recognising that, “It is
most probably that each individual respondent to a transportation survey defines comfort andconvenience in an individual fashion”. They suggested that the attractiveness of public
transport can be decomposed into four generic elements; safety, cost, comfort andconvenience. Comfort was defined to “refer to the environment in which the trip is made, theextent to which a trip may be enjoyed or not” whilst in contract convenience “refers to theefficiency and effectiveness with which a person can be transported from origin todestination”. The latter was stated to cover access and egress, in-vehicle time, walking,waiting, reliability and the number of changes.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORTThe resource paper prepared for this roundtable by Anderson et al. (2013) provides avery thorough coverage of how convenience has been interpreted. They point out thatconvenience is an “ambiguous concept” and that the car serves as a benchmark as “the very
essence of convenient travel”. The latter is invariably characterised by being door to door,
with very limited access and egress, the absence of waiting and the ability to travel at thedesired departure time in one’s own space or shared with friends or family. Admittedly, cartravel can have its inconveniences, ranging from congested traffic conditions through todifficulties finding a place to park through to having to clean the car on a weekend! But
linking convenience to the features of car travel points towards it covering time-relatedcharacteristics such as access and egress time, service frequency, the need to transfer during
a journey interchange and crowding. We might also add the ‘time invariant’ costs of hours ofoperation, acquiring trip information and tickets, and accessibility for people with special
needs.
Anderson et al. (2013) pointed us to relevant definitions of terms. The Oxford English
Dictionary defines convenience and convenient as:“convenience [noun]... the state of being able to proceed with something without
difficulty ….. the quality of being useful, easy, or suitable for someone … a thing that
contributes to an easy and effortless way of life...”“convenient [adjective]…fitting in well with a person’s needs, activities, and plans
involving little trouble or effort . helpfully placed or occurring..”
As such they state:
Thereby a suitable public transport service would offer the correct capacity and design
which is comfortable for its purpose. A reliable, punctual, safe service, offering
necessary information, appropriate ticketing and integration will allow the traveller toproceed without difficulty. Access and egress to public transport is facilitated byhelpfully
placed and available (occurring) boarding points, fitting with activities which give riseto travel demand.
They conclude that essentially “proceeding without difficulty” or “with little effort” issynonymous with the attributes of generalized cost. They cite Crocket and Hounsell (2005)
who claimed that “it is possible to consider convenience in rail travel as an embodiment offour themes: access/egress, station facilities/environment, frequency of service/schedulingand interchange between train services.”
The Roundtable took the view that convenience is a function of the time aspects, otherthan scheduled in-vehicle time, along with the ability to travel at the desired time. Arriving
late and having to transfer were indisputably seen as sources of inconvenience. The level ofcrowding chiefly affects comfort but we include it here since there is an element ofinconvenience in crowding, such as when it impinges on the ability to undertake activities
during the course of a journey2. In common with the preceding variables it can be expressed
as a time multiplier and can be expected to be a significant element of generalised cost.
Our coverage is therefore based on an ‘enhanced Generalised Cost approach’, as set out
in equation 1 in section 3.2 below. The Roundtable felt that a pragmatic way forward was to2.

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Factors not included in convenience are: safety, security, comfort, scheduled journey time andspeed.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

prioritise what we regarded to be key elements that will add most to a fuller representationof the attractiveness of public transport and, importantly, can be measured and valued. It
regarded these to be the inconvenience related to:







2.2

Access and egress time, and in particular walking time at any stage of the journey;
Waiting time, including that spent transferring between services or modes;
Not being able to travel at the desired time, covering service headway anddisplacement time;
Having to transfer during a journey;
Travel time variability;
Absence of good information;
Crowding.
Why Do We Care About Convenience?

Convenience is important because it matters, or should matter, to existing and potential
public transport users, policy makers and regulators, funding bodies, and operators. It
matters because:









It is a significant element of the overall attractiveness of public transport, directly
impacting on the wellbeing of travellers;
Poor performance provides a significant barrier to use, thereby thwarting policy efforts
to switch more people to sustainable modes of travel;
There are ever-rising expectations for convenience;
Improving convenience is particularly important in efforts to attract discretionary
travellers, such as those who would otherwise drive, to public transport, and therefore
contribute to strategic planning objectives such as reduced traffic and parking
congestion, vehicle accidents and pollution emissions;
There is a relationship between improved convenience and the financial performanceof public transport;
Transportation planning in practice often involves trade-offs between public transport
convenience and other objectives;
Convenience affects broader mobility objectives.

Public transport travel time unit costs (Euros/dollars per hour, or cents per minute) arehighly variable. When travel conditions are favourable (good walking and waiting conditions,clean and comfortable vehicles, convenient user information, etc.), the generalised journey
time cost of public transport travel can be lower than that of car travel, since passengers
experience minimal stress and can use their travel time productivity (resting, working,socialising, etc.); for this reason travellers will sometimes choose a longer duration public
transport trip than would be required to drive so they can use their time in a worthwhilemanner. However, if public transport conditions are unfavourable (uncomfortable,
unpleasant, unsafe, difficult to use, etc.) unit travel times tend to be higher than for car,which inevitably reduces public transport use.
Sommers (1969) was an early attempt at examining users’ attitudes to various
dimensions of public transport, and convenience featured highly. The rank ordering ofimportance was time, convenience, comfort, safety, weather based reliability, cost, noise andmechanical reliability. Another early study (Paine et al., 1969) was more extensive with
importance ratings covering 33 time, cost, convenience, comfort, safety and attitudinalterms. Again convenience issues rated highly, with reliability and travel time being the twomost important attributes.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Public transport users regularly prioritise convenience improvements. Recent market
research of bus users in the UK (Passenger Focus, 2010a) explored 30 possible
improvements to bus services. Convenience factors featured highly, including reliability (1 st),frequency (2nd), seat availability (3rd) and buses that cover a wider range of destinations(5th). Notably a 5 minute journey time reduction, outside our definition of convenience, wasrated as the 23rd most important improvement! As for rail passengers (Passenger Focus,
2010b), the most important priority for improvement amongst the 31 attributes covered was
prices followed by reliability (2nd), sufficient trains at the time of travel (3rd), availability ofseats (4th), information on delays (5th), information on train times and platforms (6th) andqueuing time (7th). A journey time reduction of 5 minutes was 11th.
Trompet et al. (2013) provide an international dimension across 10 different cities using
a standard set of questions relating to the three most important features of bus service
quality out of eight presented. The range across the cities (in 2012) of the percentages of
respondents citing an aspect of service quality as amongst the three most important criteria
were:



Availability (frequency and reliability of service, hours of operation): 86-98

Accessibility (ease of getting on and off): 8-17

Information (availability and quality of maps, timetables, delay information): 32-50

Time (travel time and on-time running): 66-78



Customer care (helpful staff, responding to suggestions/complaints): 6-20

Comfort (temperature, ventilation, comfortable journey, clean, crowding): 25-42



Security (feeling safe and secure): 19-34

Environment (effect on pollution, noise, congestion): 5-17

These figures demonstrate the importance of convenience related factors. For example,
availability is the most important issue, even more than journey time whilst these two andinformation are more important than comfort and security and far more important thancustomer care, environmental considerations and ease of getting on and off...
As we have defined it here, convenience is an important aspect of the attractiveness of
public transport. Let us give an example. A typical commuting journey might be made up of
30 minutes of in-vehicle time, with 5 minutes of access and 10 minutes of egress, added towhich is 5 minutes waiting. At what might be deemed conventional values where out-ofvehicle time is double weighted, this amount to 70 minutes of generalized journey time ofwhich the convenience element makes up 57%. If we added to this average lateness of one
minute, with a multiplier of 3, and crowding conditions tending to add 25% to the value oftime spent in-vehicle, then the proportion that convenience forms of generalized journey
time is 63%. Other scenarios will yield other proportions but it is not unreasonable thatconvenience is a significant portion of the time element of travel. This will also be the casewith regard to the generalized cost of travel. Once the money elements are included,
convenience should reasonably form 25-50% of total generalized cost. Crowding alone forms
8-12% of GC for Tokyo commuters (Kato, 2014).

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Convenience variables are significant features of public transport journeys and theirrelatively large values underpin a disproportionately large contribution to its attractiveness.
Their importance also opens avenues for making public transport more competitive.
Firstly, as Krygsman et al. (2004) state, “Access and egress are the weakest links in a
public transport chain and determine the availability and convenience of public transport.
Initiatives aimed at improving access and egress hold potential to significantly reduce public
transport trip time and are inexpensive options compared to the expensive infrastructure andvehicle enhancement alternatives frequently considered”. Not only might it be possible insome circumstances to be more cost-effective to achieve overall journey time reductions by
operating on OVT terms but the greater valuation of OVT savings ought to reap greater
dividends.
Secondly, Litman (2014) provides interesting examples of how the travel time costs oftransit can exceed those of the same car journey but, with incremental improvements inconvenience due to the conditions in which the journey is made, can significantly improve theattractiveness of transit to be competitive with car without any reductions in the journey timeitself.
Thirdly, if convenience is important to users of public transport, how much more is it anissue for non-users who do not use public transport precisely because they regard it to beinconvenient?
We can therefore conclude that convenience is a ‘big issue’, and if convenience isimportant to users and potential users, then it can be expected to have an impact on thefinancial bottom line of operators, and therefore be of concern to a broad range ofstakeholders. Indeed, there are several indications that service quality improvements trigger
larger demand responses than fare changes (see the resource papers by Anderson et al.
(2013) and by Lee (2013)). Service quality management can affect the financial
sustainability of public transport, particularly if accompanied by fare management.
Operators may regard convenience often as beyond their control, thereby introducing an
unwelcome level of uncertainty. Train operators are faced with a fixed network and hence
find it difficult to influence access and egress times and other costs that have a significant
bearing on their attractiveness. Whilst bus operators can be more flexible in their networks,
they suffer the vagaries of traffic congestion and buses can as a result be notoriously
unreliable particularly at times when most people wish to travel.
Convenience is also an important issue for regulators that seek to incentivise operator
performance. Contracts between authorities and operators that are based on indicators ofconvenience can lead to improved convenience. In the UK, for example, the Schedule 8
payments mechanism means that train operators and the infrastructure provider are finedand compensated according to the degree of delay that they cause or incur. In Transantiago,
bus operators receive significant fines if the frequency offered per line is below thatrequested, and if headway variability exceeds a threshold. The STIF (the public transport
regulator for the Ile-de-France region) recently signed a 4 year contract with the RATP and
the SNCF (the public transport operators for the Central Paris area and the regional railway
network respectively). If we limit consideration to the STIF/RATP contract, signed for the
2012-2015 period, the total financial envelope for the service provision and the investments
planned is around 15 billion euros, among which 28 million are related to a bonus-penalty
system, depending on the quality of the service provided to users (in the previous contract
for 2008-2011, this amount was 21 million). Punctuality's weight within this bonus-penalty
scheme is 50%, the information for users corresponds to 14% and the users' satisfaction

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

with service quality forms 10%. The latter is now assessed through a survey of 120 000
users per year covering the three main issues of environment, accessibility and information.
For the regional railway network (RER), users will be refunded (50% of the Navigo travelpass) if the service delivery becomes ‘unacceptable’.
A perverse incentive of some performance regimes has been the padding of timetables
with additional recovery time. With regard to Dutch railways, Kroon et al. (2009) point out:
“To increase the robustness of the timetable, we increased the running times, dwell times,
and headway times by time supplements based on experience and expert opinions. Timesupplements in the running and dwell times absorb small disturbances in the real-time
operations, allowing trains to recover from delays. Time supplements in the headway times,
also called buffer times, reduce the propagation of delays from one train to another.” Abalance has to be struck between speed and reliability.
It is widely regarded that consumers have ever rising quality expectations in all markets
and thus whatever importance public transport convenience currently has, and we would
argue it is significant, it will become more of an issue in future, particularly in the light ofincreases in the attractiveness of car travel. Improving public transport convenience can be
virtuous: it increases demand, revenue, public support and acceptability, helping to ensure
its long term viability.
Finally, adding convenience to CBA can lead to appreciable increases in benefits. For
example, the resource paper by Kroes et al. (2013) integrating the value of crowding in thesocio-economic appraisal of the extension of RER line E increases total benefits by 6%.
Similar orders of magnitude are found in studies for Japan, as were discussed in thepresentation at the Roundtable by Kato.
2.3

Official Multiplier Values

In some countries, official values are specified to be used in the appraisal of transport
investments and policies, particularly where public funding is involved. The primary focus ofattention over the years has been valuation of in-vehicle travel time savings. We are,however, here concerned with recommended multipliers for the convenience factors set out
in section 2.1.
Bickel et al. (2004) as part of the EU funded HEATCO project concerned with transportcosting and project appraisal provided a useful summary of the state-of-play in Europe earlyin the 21st century regarding convenience multipliers. They stated:“Four countries include guidance weights or values for the treatment of walk, wait andtransfer times (Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK). Other countries, such as
France and the Netherlands, make reference to the fact that walk, wait and transfer
times may have different values from in-vehicle-time but do not suggest any weights.
Denmark and Sweden weight walk-time the same as in-vehicle-time, but weight waittime and transfer-time at twice the value of in-vehicle-time. For air trips Sweden
values transfer-time at 1.7 times the value of in-vehicle-time. Switzerland also values
transfer-time at twice the value of in-vehicle-time but does not give specific guidanceon the treatment of walk-time and wait-time components. The UK values time spent

14

Summary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 2014

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

walking at twice the value of in-vehicle-time, whilst time spent waiting at 2.5 times
the value3”
On the matter of crowding and reliability they added:“Sweden, Denmark and the UK include valuations of travel time that is in excess ofthat expected (i.e. delay) for public transport trips only. Denmark and the UK value
delays at the same as that spent waiting for public transport (i.e. twice in-vehicletime for Denmark and 2.5 times in-vehicle-time for the UK). Sweden on the other
hand uses a range of values (from 1.6 to 3.7 times in-vehicle-time) depending on thejourney purpose (work/non-work) and the mode. French guidelines value travel inovercrowded conditions on public transport at 1.5 times the value of standard invehicle-time. The UK guidelines distinguish between passengers who sit inovercrowded conditions and those who stand. For non-work travel the values range
from 1.1p/min to 30.8p/min which reflects a range of about 1.1 times in-vehicle-time
to 4.5 times in-vehicle-time”.
The position some ten years ago was therefore that even in the developed economies ofEurope there was limited recognition of convenience related variables in official
recommendations.
The more recent Mackie and Worsley (2013) ‘benchmarking’ report extends coverage tosome Non-European countries but with fewer European countries included, and we drew on
this material in collating the official values contained in Table 1. We also asked Roundtableparticipants if they were aware of official multiplier values relating to public transport as well
as approaching academics and organisations in Canada, Italy, South Korea, Spain,
Switzerland, Portugal and Chinese Taipei.
The current situation regarding official multiplier values is, to the best of ourunderstanding, that few countries worldwide have them. Indeed, no country has
recommendations for all the convenience variables of interest here. For those that haveofficial values, walk and wait multipliers are the most common followed by reliability andcrowding. We are not aware of official values relating to displacement time.
We do not here comment on the official recommendations but defer it to a broader
discussion within the review of empirical evidence in section 4. But we note that official
appraisal values do not tell the whole story for the following main reasons:3.

Some countries differ quite markedly in their approaches to appraisal and toforecasting;In several countries, sub-national organisations and operators provide guidance;Specific schemes and policies, and invariably major ones but even more routine
ones, have developed bespoke models to support forecasting and appraisal;Partly as a result of these points, and also because of academic investigation, there
is now a wealth of evidence on the subject.

It is elsewhere in the report stated “In Germany only in-vehicle time is included within an
appraisal - thus interchange time and time spent waiting for a public transport service is
excluded

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Appraisal and Forecasting
Several countries differ quite markedly in their approaches to appraisal and forecasting,as we have pointed out in notes to Table 1. In Chile, no distinction is made between different
elements of travel time in appraisal but demand modelling uses walk time and wait time
multipliers of 3.6 and 1.9 respectively along with a transfer penalty of 7.5 minutes. Reliability
and crowding are not explicitly included but are assumed to be discerned by mode specificconstants.
Appraisal in the Netherlands also uses door-to-door time where the value of time does
not distinguish by the type of time, although reliability is accounted for. However, thenational model (LMS) does distinguish between different components of time.

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Table 1. Official Multipliers for Public Transport Convenience Terms
Walk

Wait

1.4
1.2 < 5min
1.8 > 20min

1.4
2.0 Congested
1.2 Transfer

1.0

1.0

Denmark

1.5 Transfer

France2.0

2.0
1.5 Transfer
1.5

Germany

1.0

1.0

Japan

1.25 Transfer on flat
1.65 Transfer upstairs
1.53 Transfer
downstairs
0.89 Transfer using
escalator

1.0

Norway1.0 Access < 50km
1.36 Access > 50km

Based onheadway

As Sweden

RR 0.67 PT<50km
RR 0.42 Bus>50km
RR 0.54 Train>50km

Sweden1.36 Access
2.5 Transfer

2.5 Transfer< 100km1.13 <10m head
0.92 11-30 head
0.45 31-60 head
0.28 > 61-120 head
0.13 > 120 head
> 100 km0.51 < 60m head
0.26 61-480m head
0.21 >480m head

3.5 Late

1.0

1.0

Australia

Chile

A

A

Netherlands

A

Headway

Reliability

Crowding

Interchange

3.0 Late
6.0 Late at stop
1.5 Late in-vehicle

1.0 LF < 70%
1.1 Seat 1.4 Stand LF=100%
1.3 seated 2.0 stand Crush

5 within mode
7 between mode
10 different facility

1.0
0.80

2.0 LateB

6
2

Seat 1+0.08PM
2Stand 1.25+0.09PM
1.0

1.0 Late

D

RR 0.4 Commuting
RR 1.1 Business
RR 0.6 Other

C

1+0.027LF(LF<100%)
0.9442+0.0828 LF(100%<LF<150%)
0.8+0.179LF(150%<LF<200%)-0.22+0.690LF(200%<LF<250%)-1.37+1.15LF(250%<LF)
E

1.0-3.0 depending on crowding

2.0 (multiplierapproach) or
10 min pertransfer

2-10 <50km
10 >50km

Table 1. Official Multipliers for Public Transport Convenience Terms (contd)
Walk

Wait

New
Zealand

1.4 Access
2.0 Transfer

2.0 Transfer

UnitedKingdom

2.0 for Non EB
1.0 for EB

2.5 for Non EB
1.0 for EB

UnitedStates

2.0 for local travel andNon EB

2.0 for local and
Non Business

Headway

Full:Reduced Tickets
1.0:1.0 ≤15m head
0.95:0.85 20m head
0.87:0.70 30m head
0.65:0.45 60m headF

Reliability

Crowding

3.9 Late
5.0 Late at Stop
2.8 Late En Route

1.4

Lateness 2.5
G
RR 1.4

1.0 LF < 70%
1.0-1.05 Seat 70%<LF<100%2
1.06-2.12 Seat 1-3 PM
2
1.45-2.80 Stand 1-3 PMInterchange

H

A

In Chile, the Netherlands and Germany, appraisal deals in door-to-door time, thereby not using multipliers for otherelements of time.

B

Complicated functions for late time are implied according to the base share of the journey affected by lateness and theamount of delay time.

C

In Japan, the load factor (LF) is defined as the number of passengers relative to the seating capacity plus the space forstandees.

D

RR denotes reliability ratio, the ratio of the value of the standard deviation of time to the value of time.

E

Values exist for standing but they are in monetary units and the implied multipliers are not clear.

F

Official railway industry values.

G

Here RR is defined as the standard deviation of lateness relative to mean lateness.

H

Official railway industry penalties exist but they are not pure transfer penalties but also include the consequences of notpremium weighting the amount of time spent transferring.

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORTIn Germany, rail investments at the national level include transfer time in the travel
times and in appraisal the various components of time are given the same weight. These aredifferent to the weights used in forecasting which tend to be unpublished. For public
transport investment at the local and regional level, walking, waiting and transfer times arecalculated and included with a weighting of one.
British official multiplier values until recently related only to walk and wait time, whereas
the railway industry in its standard forecasting procedures has for over 25 years been using
headway, interchange, crowding and reliability multipliers (ATOC, 2013).
Sub-National Recommendations
Table 1 does include some values that originated in railway administrations and there
are some significant regional organisations and operators that provide guidance on
multipliers for use in transport investment, planning and policy appraisal.
Transport for London has its Business Case Development Manual (Transport for London
2013) which involves a mix of Department for Transport standard recommendations but
with, as we shall see below, a significant amount of detail added to cover station and train
crowding, the precise walking and waiting conditions, and a wide range of information
provision.
In the Ile-de-France, STIF use multipliers of 2 for waiting time, access/egress walking
time to public transport and transfer time. For reliability, STIF value a 5% improvement inreliability as equivalent to 4.6 minutes of travel time saving. The current ANTONIN model
uses a multiplier of 2.5 for transfer walking time and 2 for waiting and access/egress walking
time (Kroes et al., 2006).
In Hong Kong, MTR use multipliers for walking and waiting of 2 in their rail demand
forecasting, but there are no specific multipliers for the other elements of convenience
covered here, whilst Metrolinx in Ontario has used walk and wait multipliers ranging from 1.5
to 2.5 with transfer penalties ranging from 2.5 to 10 minutes.
In New York, MTA and NYCT have a range of models available to them. The assignment
model weights, across all purposes, walk time by 1.5, wait time by 1.25 and uses a transfer
penalty of 1 minute. The weighting of time at 100% capacity at 1.15 is though recognised to
not fully reflect the discomfort of crowding. As for MTA’s Regional Transport (Mode Choice)
Forecasting Model, walk, wait and transfer multipliers of 1.5 are used with a transfer penalty
of around 5 minutes. Road access to rail has a multiplier of 2, rising to 2.5 for accessing
transit. Their ‘Best Practices Model’ covering the journey to work weights wait time andtransfer time for rail at 2.6 for wait times of 7 minutes or less and at 1.42 for more than 7
minutes; the reasoning being at higher headways people are more likely to consult the
timetable. Walk time has a multiplier of 3.36.
The Barcelona metro places multipliers of 1.5 on walking access and egress time, 1.5 to
2 on waiting time, 1 on headway, and between 2 and 4 on interchange time.
Bespoke Scheme Evidence and Other Research Outputs
There is now a considerable amount of evidence, as our review below demonstrates, into
multiplier values for convenience variables, and much of this comes from models developed
to address specific projects, issues and unknowns rather than informing national policy.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Summary
It was the view of Roundtable participants that the use of the GC measurement, as
proposed here, by operators and authorities is generally poor in practice, although better insome European metros than elsewhere.
It was felt that considerable benefit could be obtained by making use of the evidence
that exists or deriving local evidence.

3. MEASURING AND VALUING CONVENIENCE

There are two ways that improvements in convenience can come about. One isessentially customer focused, responding to what travellers want, and the other is productled, driven by investment and replacement, new technology and external factors such ascompetition and policy directives. In both cases, it is essential that we can measure thechanges that will be experienced by travellers and that we can place a value on them. In thisregard, the Anderson et al. (2013) resource paper usefully points out:
“To make public transport services more convenient and therefore attractive topassengers, public transport operators and authorities should be keen to ensure ahigh quality of service on the public transport system. This may require an
improvement in service quality, which can only be achieved by a clear understandingof travel behaviour and consumer needs and expectations. Therefore, it becomes
essential to measure the level of service in order to identify the potential strengths
and weaknesses of the public transport system. This can provide clues to public
transport management in the process of evaluating alternative service improvements
aimed at enhancing user satisfaction and increasing market share”.
We first consider issues of measurement prior to discussing how valuations are obtained
3.1

Measuring Convenience
Three approaches can be adopted here:Measure perceptions and attitudes;

Measure the strategic key performance indicators;

Measure the detailed elements of an ‘extended generalised cost’ expression.

Measure Perceptions and Attitudes
Without doubt, measuring how public transport users and indeed non users perceive
public transport convenience, and their attributes to it, would yield important insights for key
stakeholders, and indeed it is hard to envisage that it would be absent from a customer
focused approach to investment decisions and planning. As Anderson et al. (2013) state:

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Summary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 2014

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT“However, developing accurate and valid measures of service quality is a complex
task, since it deals with perceptions and attitudes. Hence, gaining a better
understanding of consumers’ perceptions of the quality of the service provided bypublic transport is important”
Whilst the measurement of perceptions and attitudes is now quite widely used to provide
important management information in its own right, it also has a long history of use inenhancing demand travel models.
In an early study (Paine et al., 1969), “an attempt was made to provide a morecomprehensive coverage of significant variables affecting mode choice decisions”, recognisingthat at the time it was not atypical that mode choice models contained only the two terms oftime and cost. Importance and satisfaction ratings were used to evaluate a wide range of
attributes relevant to mode choice.
Another early attempt to extend beyond the simple time and cost mode choice models
by using survey based psychometric rating scales to represent the effect a broader range ofmeasures, including convenience is provided by Spear (1976). He derived importance scoresand satisfaction ratings for 14 attributes, almost all of which related to convenience such as,
arriving at the intended time, avoiding long waits, avoiding leaving early for work, avoiding
long walks, journey time and having a choice of departure. A convenience index wasconstructed and used to enhanced mode choice model. The goodness of fit was significantly
better than a model based solely on time and cost.
Early models based on RP data did tend to be weak in terms of convenience variables,
largely due to data, computing and sample size limitations, although inclusion of convenienceterms was certainly not absent and as is apparent from the review material covered below.
It was though the advent and widespread acceptance of Stated Preference (SP) data thatmeant that convenience terms could be routinely and successfully included in behaviouralmodels as objectively measured terms. This again becomes apparent from the review
discussion below.
The advances in choice modelling, which benefitted RP as well as SP approaches, meantthat it is not necessary to rely on psychometric measurement, and the ability to use
objectively measurable terms in analysis and forecasting for the convenience variables ofinterest here has clear advantages.
Where psychometric approaches still have considerable attractions is in the valuation of
comfort rather than convenience related variables. This is because comfort variables,
covering issues such as ride quality, noise levels, seat comfort, rolling stock, safety andsecurity, cleanliness and décor, often have no natural units or else have natural units whichcannot be meaningfully used. If we are to generalise from categorical approaches, based on
the valuation of specific attributes such as leather seats or a particular type of train which are
not inherently transferable, then use must be made of psychometric scales. This becomeseven more critical if we want to understand the psychosocial factors that drive people’s travel
behaviour (Ellaway et al. 2003). However, this is not the case here. We can objectively
measure almost all convenience terms and we can value them and hence we can extend thegeneralised cost term beyond the simplistic time and cost representation.
Admittedly, some convenience factors, such as information acquisition and the ease ofobtaining tickets, are not so easily measured in an objective fashion and instead survey
based rating methods are required.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Measure the Strategic Key Performance Indicators
The Anderson et al. (2013) resource paper provides considerable detail on how public
transport operators measure their performance, including various convenience related terms.
These tend to be in the form of key performance indicators (KPIs) which have particular
attractions for monitoring how well an operator is performing, and might be important forcontractual, regulatory and strategic reasons.
Without the right indicators, operators, planners and transport authorities cannot
determine accurately the level of convenience they are providing to their customers. And as
the old adage goes, “what gets measured, gets managed”. Common convenience related
KPIs include the number of passengers affected by delay, the percentage of rolling stock
available for service, the percentage of ticket machines and escalators in operation, thenumber of occasions when passengers exceed the maximum capacity of stations or the
proportion of peak services above some seating capacity threshold, the percentage ofpassengers delayed by X minutes or more, and such like. The problem with some KPIs is thatthey tend to be strategic, aggregate or categorical in nature and hence not readily usedalongside valuations in appraisal. Some are collected because they are easy to collect.
However, some KPI information can be operationalised with valuation data, such asmean load factors and excess journey times. Nor is it essential for operators to measure how
they deliver on their objective using a GC approach; they can use more direct measures ofservice quality such as the percentage of passengers arriving on time or who have to stand.
And as data systems get better and more granular, operators and planners will have much
more data to turn into information on how convenient their services are. Smartcard andmobile phone data will provide much more detail on journey times and their variability, train
weighing systems will improve crowding data and GPS information will increase the accuracyof bus reliability information. These performance indicators are not always well measured
today, but technology will allow them to be better measured and managed. Such data will
provide valuable management, performance and regulatory information in its own right, andwill be more suited for inclusion within the GC expression that underpins the appraisal ofschemes and to which we now turn.
Measure Detailed Elements of the Generalised Cost Expression
Our central approach here is to use an enhanced GC approach to cover moreconvenience terms. This was essentially the approach advocated many years ago by Hensher
and McLeod (1977) who sought explicit rather than attitudinal representation of convenience(as well as comfort and effort) and reported (RP) models to this effect that contained theconvenience terms of walk time, wait time, number of transfers and seat availability amongst
a range of other factors. They did not have the benefit of large amounts of SP data to explore
the issue, but nonetheless demonstrated how what they termed variables measured in ‘policy
sensitive units’ can replace the reliance on ‘attitudinal schema’. We might usefully summarise
this position in terms of Hensher and McLeod (1977) stating:“There is a growing literature on the use of various attitudinal measurement
techniques in identifying the influences on travel choices, yet this useful work falls
short of meeting the requirements of a policy-sensitive model.”Way Forward in the Context of Valuing Convenience Variables
We are not here arguing that KPIs do not have a role, nor that measuring perceptions
and attitude is irrelevant. They both have important roles to play in:22

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT



Alerting operators and authorities of the need for action;



Informing operators and authorities of the consequences of any action;

Providing valuable management information for benchmarking, contractual andfunding purposes.

The KPIs can provide very important management information, but then one KPI cannot
be directly compared with another without converting to some ‘common currency’ such as GC
or else applying ‘political’ weights to different aspects of convenience. If we are to extend the
GC expression to cover a broader range of terms, then it seems natural to measure thesevariables, and not just for the appraisal of specific schemes but more broadly in managing
and evaluating performance. These variables can be measured in objective terms and do notneed the expense and difficulty in application of psychometric approaches. Some of the KPIs
typically recorded are difficult to apply within the extended GC approach but improvements
can be expected with technological developments in monitoring and measurement,
3.2

How Do We Value Convenience?

By value we mean how much an individual is prepared to per for a ‘one unit’improvement in some convenience variable. Thus if someone is prepared to pay €1.20 tosave 15 minutes of walking time, then the money value of walking time savings is 8 cents
per minute. Convenience attribute values are typically expressed as multipliers to IVT. If
therefore the money value of wait time is 20 cents per minute and the money value of IVT is
10 cents per minute, wait time is valued at twice the rate of IVT and the multiplier is two.
Transport planning practice the world over has invariably represented the overall
attractiveness of a public transport mode (or indeed any mode) as being composed of arange of time, cost and other factors each expressed in common monetary units using theweights described in the previous paragraph. This is termed the Generalised Cost (GC) oftravel which we could illustrate as:

𝐺𝐶 = 𝑃𝐼 + 𝑃𝑂 + 𝜆 𝐼𝑉𝑇 + 𝛼𝐴 + 𝛽𝐸 + 𝛾𝑊𝑇 + 𝛿𝐷 + 𝜃𝐶 + 𝜇𝑇

(1)

PI and P0 denote the prices for in-vehicle and out-of-vehicle travel. The remaining terms
are weighted to convert them to common monetary units. So λ is the value of IVT and α, β,γ, δ, θ, μ and ω are multipliers to be applied to the λ to represent in money terms the
additional ‘unattractiveness’ of access time (A), egress time (E), wait time (WT), expected
delay time (D), mean crowding (C) and the number of transfers during the journey (NT), andthe benefits of information (I)It is quite straightforward to have variants upon this term. So where journeys areplanned, and travellers do not arrive at random for their journey, wait time might bereplaced with headway, although wait time involved in transfers is still relevant, whilst where
there are restrictions on the actual time of travel, then it would be more appropriate to enterterms explicitly relating to the inconvenience of not being able to travel at the desired time.
As we shall see, alternative representations of reliability are possible.
Additional terms could be included to cover comfort variables, transaction costs, safety
and such like, although care needs to be taken to ensure they are independent effects. As
terms become more subjective, and are less easily measured or indeed have no natural unitsof measurement, the GC term might include ratings to reflect how well a travel option
performs in terms of factors such as internal noise, ride quality, seating comfort, décor or

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

perceived safety. Even then though, it would be necessary in an enhanced GC term to attachweights to these rating terms in much the same way as for the terms in equation 1 toconvert them into equivalent money units. We shall discuss examples of such models in
section 4
The overall attractiveness of a means of travel as represented by equation 1 could be
expressed in time units, the so-called Generalised Time (GT), by dividing through by thevalue of time (λ).
Note that the various parameters can vary across different travellers and types ofjourney. As examples amongst many types of possible variations, we might expect the valueof time for business trips to be somewhat higher than for non-business trips, reflecting thebenefits to employers of being able to use saved time productively, whilst those with higher
incomes can be expected to have higher money values as can those travelling in lesspleasant conditions.
Nor is the function necessarily linear-in-parameters; the value of time and the othermultipliers might depend on the levels that the variables take, so that say a minute of IVT
saved on a 60 minute journey has a different value to a minute of IVT saved on a 10 minutejourney. In particular, we might expect a given increase in occupancy to have a larger impact
at higher levels of crowding. There might also be interactions between variables (as opposed
to interactions with socio-economic and trip characteristics defined above) so that, forexample, the value of time is lower where the fare is higher because travellers are lesswilling to pay for time savings where the service is deemed to provide poor value for money.
It is widely regarded that the inconvenience of unreliability can be reduced by the provisionof good information.
The various transport system variables in equation 1 can be objectively measured bysome means or another, although there might be a divergence between the actual times andcosts and what individuals perceive. So, for example, there might be improvements to public
transport convenience but some travellers remain unaware of them, whilst it is not unknown
that non-users regard public transport to be less convenient than it actually is. But what
about the other components of equation 1; how are its various parameters estimated?
The valuations are relative terms expressing the satisfaction obtained from
improvements in one attribute relative to improvements in some other. This is why they aresometimes termed relative valuation. A willingness to pay €0.80 to save 10 minutes meansthat the traveller is indifferent between the current travel situation and one where the cost is€0.80 more but with a 10 minute lower journey time4. In this context the value of a travel
time saving relative to money is €0.08 per minute. The same reasoning applies to being
prepared to walk 5 minutes longer to access a through service and save 15 minutes journey
time. Obtaining estimates of how much travellers are prepared to trade-off one attributeagainst another is dependent upon information on their choices when confronted with suchtrade-off situations. Mathematical models can be estimated to explain the choices made insuch trade-off situations from which the implied valuations can be obtained by comparing therate travellers are willing to trade-off.
The first sorts of models to be estimated in order to yield relative valuations, in the
1960s and 1970s, were based around the travel choices people actually make, so-called
4.

24

Values might be derived as a willingness to pay to save time, a willingness to pay to avoid atime loss, the willingness to accept compensation in place of a time saving and the willingness
to accept compensation in the event of a time loss.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Revealed Preference (RP) methods. These were usually mode choice models although route
choice models also feature. Economists in particular are keen to base empirical analysis andinferences on what people do in the real world.
In the late 1970s, methods based upon hypothetical scenarios, imported from themarketing research literature and particularly experience in the United States, started to
attract attention and grew in popularity through the 1980s to the extent that what are
termed Stated Preference (SP) approaches have been for many years, and certainly since the1990s, the principal means of obtaining valuations in the transport market. These methods
mimic the real market conditions we ideally want for valuation purposes by offering people
multiple choices that require them to trade-off one relevant attribute against another.
RP methods are attractive because they are based upon what travellers actually do, andin well-defined choice contexts where travellers are familiar with the travel alternatives
confronting them and their characteristics and where large samples can be obtained, they
can yield important insights. However, they can struggle to provide robust estimates wheretravellers are unfamiliar with the choice context, where there is insufficient reliable
information on how travellers perceive the choices confronting them, where sample sizes are
small, and where there is limited variation in some variables, high correlation between othersor poor trade-offs. Indeed, RP methods cannot provide evidence on variables and travel
options that do not currently exist.
The reliability of values obtained from SP methods is critically dependent upon
respondents doing what they say they will do, and in particular the absence of strategic bias
where respondents exaggerate their responses to, say, time savings or cost increases inorder to influence policy makers. Other problems can arise, due to unrealistic designs or
choice contexts, failure to bear in mind real-world constraints or simply finding the exercise
too difficult, whilst the very nature in which SP information is presented breaks the habit
effects that exist in the real world.
The evidence on whether values obtained from SP exercises are robust is mixed. Whilst
SP is ‘the only show in town’ for aspects of comfort, that is not the case for the convenience
factors of interest here. Its advantages in this context are that it can be based around realworld choice contexts, thereby achieving a greater element of realism than otherwise, it canachieve much larger sample sizes, and it can control the trade-offs that are offered torespondents thereby increasing the quality of the data. SP methods are now dominant on the
grounds of cost-effectiveness, statistical efficiency and particularly the ability to examine
issues that are not possible in real markets. Nonetheless, we counsel caution since it notunknown that such methods can provide results that are not entirely credible whilst some ofthe evidence reviewed below indicates that discrepancies can exist between the multipliers
implied by the two methods.
We should also point out in passing that an additional set of concerns surround SP model
when used directly for forecasting. However, we are not here advocating such use but areconcerned primarily with valuation.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

4. REVIEW OF EVIDENCE

We here provide an account of current understanding regarding multipliers for walk andwait time, service headway and displacement time, interchange, reliability, crowding andinformation. This is based around existing review material supplemented with evidence from
specific studies where appropriate.
At the outset, we recognise that multipliers might vary across countries, although they
are inherently more transferable than monetary based valuations. And variations are not
restricted to cultural differences, but may stem from different standards and expectations,operating practices, travel conditions and socio-economic composition of the travelling (andsampled) public.
4.1

Walk and Wait Time Multipliers

Although somewhat different in nature, these two attributes form part of the OVT
associated with public transport and were the first multipliers to receive detailed attention.
They can be expected to be valued somewhat more highly than one on the grounds of theinconvenience, effort and frustration they cause. Indeed, the widely used convention of
applying a weight of two to walk and wait time is one of the oldest and most common oftransport planning practices worldwide and seems to stem from the UK Department of theEnvironment’s pioneering Mathematical Advisory Unit Note 179 (McIntosh and Quarmby,1970).
Summary of Official Walk and Wait Multipliers
The multipliers recommended as official values in Table 1 and used by public transport
operators in major cities take on a large spread. On the one hand, some countries treat all
types of time the same, as door-to-door time, and implicitly the multipliers are one. This will
also be the case for business travel for the vast majority of countries who use the Cost
Savings Approach to valuation since all types of travel time are implicitly unproductive andany time saved, of whatever form, is assumed to be transferred into productive effort.
For countries that have explicit multipliers of walk and wait time, even here a large
spread can be observed for both walk and wait time; walk varies between 1.2 and 2.0 with
2.5 at transfers whilst wait varies between 1.4 to 2.5, with a lower bound of 1.2 at transfers.
Indeed, there seems to be no consensus on which is the larger.
It could be argued that the access time multipliers are lower than for walk time,
presumably because access involves modes less strenuous than walking, whilst waiting timeat transfer seems relatively high, which might be because here waiting cannot be avoided
whereas in other cases wait time might be proxying for headway inconvenience but the effectis dampened insofar as people do not turn up randomly.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Walk and Wait Multiplier Review Evidence
There is now a large amount of evidence on walk time and wait time values, not least
because they are an essential feature of mode choice models. Although it is common that
headway replaces wait time, offsetting this is that wait time is a feature of interchange thatsometimes features in such models.
An early review of walk and wait time multipliers (Goodwin, 1975) pointed to multipliersin excess of two. McKnight (1982) reviewed evidence from 17 studies covering the UnitedStates, United Kingdom, Australia and France on the relationships between the values ofwalking, waiting and IVT. The mean walk time multiplier was 1.85 but the wait time values
had a larger mean of 2.40. Of the ten disaggregate studies providing walk and wait timevalues covered in a review of international evidence (TRRL, 1980), walk time was on averagevalued close to twice IVT and, excepting a study with a very high valuation, wait time wasvalued around three times IVT. A large scale review of international evidence (Waters, 1992)
concludes that “Several studies have shown that time spent waiting is valued more highly
than time travelling, of the order of two to one or more” whilst Ortúzar (1994) reviewed 10
mainly revealed preference (RP) Chilean studies conducted between 1983 and 1993 and, on
average, walk and wait time were valued at 2.4 and 5.4 times IVT.
Miller (1996) reported what at the time was an extensive review of international
evidence on walk time multipliers. It covered 18 from 7 countries yielding 34 multipliers. The
mean ratio was 2.28 with a standard error of 0.17. Steer Davies Gleave (1997) in theirreview of their own and also some European evidence concluded that, “Walking time isusually valued at between 1.8 and 2.4 times in-vehicle time. An average of 2.0 is
recommended for simplicity” and “Waiting time is sometimes valued higher than walking
time, up to 4.5 times higher than in-vehicle time. A ratio of 3 times is recommended.”
Turning now to more recent evidence, what emerges, both in Britain and elsewhere, is a
prima facie challenge to the convention of valuing walk and wait time at twice the rate of IVT
which is at odds with the earlier RP based evidence.
Bickel et al. (2005) provided a major review of the state-of-the-practice in transport
project appraisal in Europe. It summarises official guidance but it adds no insights on theevidence base over and above that here provided.
A number of large scale reviews of UK evidence, primarily focused on the value of time
but with insights into time multipliers, have been provided by Wardman (2001, 2004) and
Abrantes and Wardman (2011). For example, the findings of Wardman (2004) were used toincrease the UK Department for Transport’s recommended value of wait time multiplier to
2.55. Most recently, Wardman et al. (2013) extended the work to cover Europe. The
multipliers implied by these studies are reported in Table 2.

5.

This was based on the RP element of the evidence.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Table 2. Walk and Wait Time Multipliers
Wardman et al. (2013)

Wardman(2001)

Wardman(2004)

Abrantes andWardman (2011)

Walk

1.66:0.06:140

1.68:0.05:183

1.65:0.04:296

1.62:0.05:272

1.93:0.10:68

Wait

1.47:0.09:34

1.76:0.10:62

1.70:0.09:90

1.68:0.10:77

1.93:0.09:59

1.72:0.11:11

1.93:0.16:15

1.57:0.07:102

1.95:0.14:42

Transfer Wait
Access1.81:0.10:52

OVT

1.46:0.10 64

1.77:0.10:60

UK

Non UK

1.43:0.09:73

Note: Mean, standard error of the mean and number of observations reported.

As far as the UK values are concerned, they do not vary greatly across the different data
sets. What are noticeable though are that the UK numbers fall short of 2, and sometimes by
a considerable margin, and certainly less than the 2.5 for wait time in official
recommendations, and the UK values are around 15% lower than the Non UK European
values.
The figures in Table 2 though mask some important variations. For example, Abrantes
and Wardman (2011) report RP multipliers for walk and wait time of 1.84 (0.15) and 2.32
(0.18) in contrast to SP figures of 1.62 (0.04) and 1.43 (0.07) respectively whilst for
European wide evidence Wardman et al. (2013) report RP multipliers of 2.01 (0.18), 1.88
(0.16), 2.22 (0.14) and 2.03 (0.31) for walk time, access time, wait time and transfer wait
time respectively, with the corresponding SP values always being lower at 1.63 (0.04), 1.55
(0.07), 1.60 (0.07) and 1.82 (0.11). It would therefore seem that RP based figures are
somewhat higher and not inconsistent with multipliers around 2.
The RP explanation could be behind the divergence between UK and Non UK values, on
the grounds that the UK evidence places greater reliance on SP evidence. Wardman (2013)
reported a meta-model estimated to a wide range of multipliers, covering 12 attributes and1389 observations drawn from 244 studies and 18 European countries. The UK walk and wait
multipliers were found to be 22% lower even after accounting for RP walk and wait time
multipliers being valued 20% more highly.
However, given that the differences are not particularly large, the following discussion isbased upon the entire UK and Non UK data set as providing the largest set of multiplierevidence. Furthermore, Table 3 splits the values by country, for all the OVT terms combined,
and the variation is not large. Noticeably Denmark with a low average multiplier also places
more emphasis on SP data.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Table 3. OVT Multipliers by Country
Country
Denmark

1.64:0.07:45

Netherlands

2.02:0.17:14

Norway1.87:0.15:30

Sweden2.00:0.13:28

Switzerland

2.14:0.39:11

Spain

2.16:0.19:12

UK

1.62:0.04:468

All Other

2.11:0.13:44

Note: Mean, standard error of the mean and number of observations reported.

Proceeding therefore with the combined European data set, the meta-model reported in
Wardman (2013) can be used to ‘predict’ walk and wait time multipliers. The walk time
multiplier varied by mode whilst it and the wait time multiplier varied by purpose anddistance, the latter because the money value of time increases with distance at a stronger
rate than the money values of walk and wait time. There was also a trend reduction ofaround 1% per year apparent whilst RP multipliers were larger. The multipliers predicted by
the model for 2011 and based on RP evidence are set out in Table 4. These figures would
suggest multipliers of 2 should be regarded as upper limits.
Table 4. Walk and Wait (RP) Multipliers Implied by Wardman (2013) Meta Model
BUS
Distance (Km)

TRAIN

5

25

100

250

5

25

100

250

WALK
CommuteBusiness
Other

2.05
1.85
2.18

1.98
1.79
2.10

1.91
1.73
2.03

1.87
1.69
1.99

1.80
1.62
1.91

1.73
1.57
1.84

1.68
1.52
1.78

1.64
1.48
1.75

WAIT
CommuteBusiness
Other

1.80
1.62
1.91

1.73
1.57
1.84

1.68
1.52
1.78

1.64
1.48
1.75

1.80
1.62
1.91

1.73
1.57
1.84

1.68
1.52
1.78

1.64
1.48
1.75

Note: Transfer Wait and Access have the same multipliers as Wait.

Returning to the raw data, Tables 5 and 6 sets out the OVT multipliers split by journey
purpose and mode for the European wide evidence in Wardman (2013).
We observe that there tends to be relatively little variation by journey purpose,
particularly when the sample size is large. If anything the leisure multipliers are largest andthe business travel multipliers the lowest, consistent with the meta-model predictions inTable 4.

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29

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Table 5. OVT Multipliers by Journey Purpose
Attribute

AllCommuteLeisureBusiness

Other

Walk Time

1.68:0.04:344

1.69:0.07:119

1.70:0.09:81

1.52:0.25:7

1.65:0.07:137

Access time

1.68:0.07:144

1.68:0.13:34

1.82:0.14:46

1.66:0.17:17

1.55:0.11:47

Wait Time

1.80:0.07:138

1.83:0.11:56

1.76:0.14:37

1.54:0.32:5

1.84:0.11:40

Transfer Wait

1.84:0.10:26

1.59:0.12:11

1.99:0.27:5

1.28:0.0:1

2.12:0.16:9

Note: Mean, standard error of the mean and number of observations reported. Other here includes combinations of
purposes.

As for mode, the segmentations are according to whether the multipliers vary by mode
used and mode valued. The samples reported are bus users valuing bus OVT, rail users
valuing rail OVT and car users valuing any public transport option. Since there are
combinations of modes used and valued, the figures cover only a portion of the full data set.
The main difference between bus and rail users is that access time is somewhat lower for
rail, presumably because rail often involves modes of access that have a lesser disutility thanwalking which will be typical for bus. Whilst car users might be expected to have higher
values of the OVT variables, since they are less accustomed to it and indeed it may be one of
the reasons why they choose car, there is no support for this. In general, the modal
variations are fairly minor, in line with the findings of the meta-model reported in Table 4.
Table 6. OVT Multipliers by Mode
Attribute

All

Bus

Rail

Car

Walk Time

1.68:0.04:344

1.64:0.12:29

1.65:0.12:17

1.47:0.08:98

Access time

1.68:0.07:144

1.62:0.12:8

1.29:0.14:12

1.45:0.13:21

Wait Time

1.80:0.07:138

1.74:0.13:25

1.49:0.17:17

1.75:0.25:10

Transfer Wait

1.84:0.10:26

1.92:0.20:8

1.83:0.25:5

1.64:0.08:2

Note: Mean, standard error of the mean and number of observations reported.

A review has recently been completed of public transport values of time and otherattributes in Australia and New Zealand (Wallis et al., 2013). 21 studies yielded 48 walk time
multipliers averaging 1.3, with little variation by time of day. As an average, this seems to beon the low side. However, it was pointed out that:“All but two of the studies were SP surveys and in this regard it is worth mentioning a
potential problem in getting respondents to hypothesise a different location for a bus
stop or train station they normally use. The exceptions were two Sydney RP studies(Fox et al. 2010; Hague Consulting 1996) in which the value of walk time wasestimated cross sectionally based on household travel survey data. These two
revealed preference studies estimated a higher valuation of walk time of 1.5”.
Not only does this pattern of results accord with the results presented above, but the
explanation is similar to that offered in those studies in terms of the realism of varying walktime.
From 6 Australian studies and 15 multipliers and 1 New Zealand study and 1 multiplier,
Wallis et al. (2013) found wait time at transfer to average 1.25. Again this seems low andagain SP evidence dominates and its inability to represent realistic wait time variations may
be a contributory factor. In a resource paper for this Roundtable Lee (2013) reports mode
choices models where the OVT multipliers varies between 1.01, 1.05 and 1.7 across threemodels.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

One of the issues discussed in the Roundtable was the level of detail that is provided by
the available multiplier evidence, and in particular we might expect multipliers to vary not
only according to person type but also according to the conditions in which the walking andwaiting time is spent. The weather, the travel environment and facilities, perceived safety,
the degree of crowding and the amount of effort involved will impact on these multipliers.
Indeed both might be non-linear, so that the unit values depend upon the amount of walking
or waiting time. All these possible sources of variation might be why the OVT multipliers havebeen observed to vary somewhat.
There is not a large amount of evidence on influences on the walk and wait time
multipliers. Transport for London’s Business Case Development Manual (Transport for
London, 2013) provides an unusually high level of detail in its recommended appraisal
parameters, although the evidence underpinning it and its strength is not immediately
apparent. Nonetheless, some entirely plausible relationships are specified.
For waiting for trains or lifts in acceptable, uncongested conditions a multiplier of 2.5 isused. However, this is increased on crowded platforms. The wait multiplier (WT) is then afunction of the congestion factor (CF) as:

𝑊𝑇𝐶Walking in unimpeded conditions (WK) has a multiplier of 2, but is also allowed to varywith the degree of congestion:

𝐶𝑊
CF is related to passengers per m2 (P) as:
𝐶

𝑃

𝑃

𝐶

𝑃

𝐶

𝑃

Illustrative multipliers for WK and WT are given in Table 7 below for vary degrees ofcongestion (P).
Table 7. Transport for London Walk and Wait Multipliers and Congestion
P

WK

WT

0.5

2.00

2.50

1.0

2.08

2.67

1.5

2.33

3.17

2.0

2.75

4.00

2.5

2.75

4.00

Both multipliers start at UK official recommended values with notable increases withcongestion, particularly for waiting time.
In addition, Transport for London have a whole range of additional, entirely sensible,
modifiers of:Walking upstairs: 4.0

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Walking downstairs unimpeded: 2.5



Waiting to get to ticket office window or machine: 3.4

Transaction at ticket office window or machine: 2.5

Queuing at a PASS agent: 3.0

Transaction at a PASS agent: 2.0



Delay at Ticket Gates: 4.0

Travelling on escalators: 1.5

Travelling in lifts: 2.0

For bus journeys, the weights used are simply 2.5 for waiting and 2.0 for walking.
As is apparent from Table 1, the Japanese CBA manual for rail allows variations in thewalking time multiplier according to whether the walking is upstairs, downstairs, on the flator on an escalator (Kato, 2014). We note though that the recommended Japanesemultipliers are relatively low for walk and wait time. This is backed up in the Tokyo rail route
choice RP models of Morichi et al. (2001) where across commuting, business and leisurejourney purposes the access/egress multipliers vary between 1.18 and 1.35 and the transfer
time multipliers vary between 1.19 and 1.46.
Douglas Economics (2006) provides interesting insight into the impact of crowding on
platforms and in access areas and entrances on walking and waiting time multipliers. Table 8
reports their estimated multipliers for different degrees of crowding defined in terms ofpassenger per square metre (PM2). Some very large variations in the multipliers can beobserved, somewhat larger than used by Transport for London.
Table 8. Impact of Crowding on Station Walking and Waiting Times
Crowding<0.2 PM2

0.2-0.5 PM2

0.5-2 PM

2

>2 PM

Wait

1.9

1.5

3.2

5.5

Walk

2.2

2.2

3.5

6.2

2

A piece of research discussed at the Roundtable is interesting from, amongst otherperspectives, the similarity of effects between two somewhat different cities and for casting
more light of detailed valuations, particularly interchange which we return to below.
Raveau et al. (2013) used survey data to examine metro users’ actual route choices inboth London and Santiago. The range of attributes explaining behaviour was very similar in
the two locations, with OVT multipliers varying with time of day, purpose and, in the case ofwalk time, being higher for women. In London the waiting time multiplier ranged between
1.59 and 2.26 whereas for Santiago the range was 1.53 to 1.99. As for the walking time
multiplier, it ranged between 1.24 and 2.90 in London and 1.91 and 3.98 in Santiago. Notethat these figures would tend to indicate multipliers above the SP based evidence above andnotably it was derived from RP data.
Conclusions on Walk and Wait Time
There is now a lot of evidence on walk and wait time multipliers, and indeed there has
been for a long time. The evidence seems to be indicating that RP based multipliers are

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

larger than their SP equivalents, and it has been speculated that this might be because ofdifficulties in conveying realistic valuations in walk and wait times in SP exercises.
It can be seen that the multipliers vary quite a lot. This was noted in the early review ofwalk and wait time multipliers by Goodwin (1975) and repeated some 30 years later by
HEATCO (Bickel et al., 2005). Apart from the RP-SP dimension, this could be because theconditions in which walk and waiting time are experienced vary somewhat, along withpossible non-linearities. Having said that, variations by purpose and mode do not seem large.
We have uncovered sensible variations in multipliers according to the degree ofcrowdedness. These provide an important element of detail. Going forward, it would be
informative to add to such level of detail by quantifying other influential factors.
Bearing in mind the heterogeneity within the evidence, there is no doubt that a premium
should be attached to walking and waiting time relative to IVT, and one could interpret theresults as indicating that multipliers of 2 in normal conditions can be regarded to be upperbounds.
There was limited evidence to suggest the walk and wait time multipliers were fallingover time, although it is conceivable that there are confounding effects here.
4.2

Departure Time Convenience

Being able to make a journey essentially without the constraints imposed by timetabled
departures is often cited as one of the key features of car convenience. Two attributes are
relevant here. One is the service headway and the other is displacement time. As public
transport services become more frequent, travellers tend to turn up at random at the station
or stop and the inconvenience of not being able to travel at the precise desired time isreflected in waiting time. As services become less frequent, there is the inconvenience not
only of departing at increasingly more undesirable times but also the costs involved in
obtaining information and planning. In the latter case, displacement time is relevant,indicating the disutility incurred as a result of not departing at the preferred time.
Headway can represent both the wait time and the displacement time effect, and this as
we shall see is a cause of some ambiguity in interpretation. Alternatively, it is possible todirectly estimate displacement time reflecting the inconvenience of not being able to departat the desired time.
Headway might also have ‘correlated’ benefits such as providing a degree of flexibility
independent of any inconvenience issues whilst more frequent services are likely to be lesscrowded and be beneficial when there are service disruptions.
Summary of Official Headway and Displacement Time Multipliers
As is apparent from Table 1, we have not identified official values relating todisplacement time. Nonetheless, such values are used in practice; for example, the railway
industry in Britain constructs its recommended frequency penalties using displacement time
multipliers (ATOC, 2013).
Sweden offers official headway multiplier recommendations which have been adopted in
Norway whilst in the UK the railway industry has nationally recognised values. What isnoticeable about these values is that they fall as headway increases, reflecting theSummary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 201433

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

movement from largely random arrivals at high frequencies to largely planned arrivals at low
frequencies.
Review of Headway and Displacement Time Multiplier Evidence
There is less by way of review evidence on the value of headway and departure time
shift. The largest conducted, covering UK and European evidence, is reported by Wardman(2013) and Wardman et al. (2013).
A feature of the review evidence is that it does not distinguish the random and planned
arrival elements surrounding headway. Estimated headway multipliers are invariably
constant regardless of the level of headway. Table 9 reports European wide headway anddisplacement time multipliers obtained from Wardman (2013). The headway values arequite variable across countries and this might reflect different balances of planned andrandom arrivals. The displacement time values largely comes from UK studies, but the vast
majority of the other 28 observations are not greatly different.
Table 9. Headway and Displacement Multipliers by Country from Wardman (2013)
Headway
Denmark

Displacement

0.59:0.07:19-

Netherlands

0.36:0.05:6

0.52:0.07:18

Norway0.89:0.22:15

0.52:0.09:8

Sweden0.45:0.07:13-

Switzerland

0.53:0.06:25

-

Spain

0.53:0.10:18-

UK

0.76:0.03:225

0.67:0.06:79

0.40:0.09:8

0.36:0.21:2

0.71:0.03:329

0.63:0.05:107

All OtherAll

Note: Mean, standard error of the mean and number of observations reported.

Wallis et al. (2013) find the headway multiplier to average 0.66 across 22 studies
yielding 63 observations but a little lower at 0.48 across 8 New Zealand observations from 5
studies. These are not out of line with the European evidence.
If headway represented purely random arrival effects, then we would expect the value ofheadway to be half the value of waiting time. A mean headway multiplier of 0.71 is therefore
broadly consistent with the waiting time multiplier given that the latter seems to be at most
two and headway will not simply represent random arrivals. Indeed, Kroes et al. (2006)
stated that, “The percentage of passengers aiming for a specific train is strongly related tothe scheduled frequency of service: for train services with headways of 15 minutes or longer
around 80% of all passengers aim for a specific train, whereas for services with headways of
5 minutes or less only around 20% aim for a specific train”.
If headway represented a pure displacement time effect, then given uniformly
distributed desired departure times, a given headway will on average translate into a quarteras much displacement time. Clearly, the mean multipliers for headway and displacement
time are not consistent with this. We note that studies rarely give the departure times
associated with a given headway do not make the link with displacement time. In any event,the headway, displacement and wait time multipliers can be consistent depending upon the
proportion of planned and random arrivals.
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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Table 10 disaggregates the Wardman (2013) displacement and headway multipliers byjourney purpose. It also distinguishes between displacement time that involves travelling
earlier than desired, later than desired or where no distinction was made.
The headway multipliers are remarkably similar by journey purpose. Displacement time
seems to be more highly valued for later than desired departures, although not by much andnot for leisure trips. Commuters as might be expected dislike departing later more thandeparting earlier given arrival time constraints at work whilst leisure travellers might not
want to get up sooner to set out on their journey and have fewer arrival time constraints.
Confounding factors here though are direction of travel and/or time of day which might be
expected to affect relativities but which studies typically do not control for or report on.
Given the absence of the latter distinctions, and that the differences are in any event notlarge, it might be sensible to use a single value for displacement time that does not vary by
earlier or later departures. Observing the row for all displacement time multipliers would
seem to justify larger values for commuting and lower for leisure, although again purpose
effects may confound with other effects.
Table 10. Headway and Displacement Time Multipliers by Journey Purpose
Attribute

All

Headway

0.71:0.03:329

Displace Early

0.56:0.07:44

Displace Late
Displace Both
Displace All

CommuteLeisureBusiness

Other

0.67:0.05:68

0.71:0.04:95

0.74:0.07:37

0.71:0.05:129

0.59:0.14:18

0.63:0.22:8

0.50:0.06:7

0.50:0.02:11

0.65:0.08:47

0.74:0.017:19

0.43:0.08:9

0.64:0.14:7

0.67:0.11:12

0.74:0.14:16

1.63:0.87:2

1.00:0.0:1

1.00:0.00:1

0.55:0.08:12

0.63:0.05:107

0.72:0.11:39

0.55:0.11:18

0.60:0.08:15

0.58:0.05:35

Note: Mean, standard error of the mean and number of observations reported. Other includes combinations of
purposes.

Table 11 provides multipliers by mode, where the car multipliers are for motorists but
relating to public transport. Very much smaller headway penalties are apparent for rail,
presumably due to lower frequencies and hence more trip planning. This might also underpin
the larger displacement multipliers for rail than for bus users but it may simply be that it isless of an issue for bus users.
Table 11. Headway and Departure Time Shift Multipliers by Mode
Attribute

All

Bus

Rail

Car

Headway

0.71:0.03:329

0.76:0.10:40

0.42:0.03:43

0.80:0.05:92

Displacement

0.56:0.07:44

0.35:0.14:2

0.77:0.09:26

0.60:0.07:14

Note: Mean, standard error of the mean and number of observations reported.

The meta-model reported in Wardman (2013) can be used to provide implied
displacement time and headway multipliers. These were found to vary by purpose, distanceand mode for headway and whether the journey was inter-urban for displacement time.
There is also a slight variation between earlier and later displacement times. Table 12
contains illustrative figures.
There is a strong reduction in the headway values with distance, presumably proxying
for the different balance of planned and unplanned journeys. Business travellers findheadway most important, which is to be expected. The headway multipliers now seems to be
more important for train users, and presumably the previous results were being confoundedby the strong declining distance effect given that the bus data is almost entirely for urban
Summary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 201435

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

travel. As for displacement time, this is much more of an issue for inter-urban journeys,
thereby explaining the difference between train and bus apparent in Table 11 which now
disappears6. As with Table 10, commuters have the largest displacement time multipliers
although the variations are relatively small.
Table 12. Multipliers Implied by Wardman (2013) Meta-Model
BUS

TRAIN

5

25

100

250

5

25

100

250

Headway
CommuteBusiness
Other

0.65
0.76
0.65

0.47
0.54
0.47

0.35
0.41
0.35

0.29
0.34
0.29

0.83
0.97
0.83

0.60
0.70
0.60

0.45
0.52
0.45

0.37
0.43
0.37

Displace Early
CommuteBusiness
Other

0.48
0.37
0.37

0.48
0.37
0.37

0.80
0.61
0.61

0.80
0.61
0.61

0.48
0.37
0.37

0.48
0.37
0.37

0.80
0.61
0.61

0.80
0.61
0.61

Displace Late
CommuteBusiness
Other

0.55
0.42
0.42

0.55
0.42
0.42

0.92
0.70
0.70

0.92
0.70
0.70

0.55
0.42
0.42

0.55
0.42
0.42

0.92
0.70
0.70

0.92
0.70
0.70

Note: Metro and LRT headway values would be 28% larger. Presumably this reflects the greater degree of random
arrivals given the generally higher frequencies involved.

Conclusions on Departure Time Shift and Headway
There is a large amount of headway multiplier evidence, which at an aggregate level isconsistent with the wait time multipliers reviewed in the previous section. There are only
slight variations by journey purpose but, as expected, headway becomes less important for
longer journeys. The headway multiplier is larger for train. Displacement time seems to be
more of an issue for inter-urban travel, where planning is commonplace.
It is noticeable that the multivariate analysis provides different results to the simple
tabulations with regard to how the multipliers vary mode, and this is presumably because thelatter are confounded with the distance effects.
Whilst service frequencies can be readily observed and hence their use in GC based
applications is straightforward, this is not the case for displacement time where surveys areneeded on desired departure times to convert timetabled departures into displacement time.
Two words of caution. There is an element of ambiguity in the headway multipliers. We
might expect them to fall as the balance between planned and random arrivals moves infavour of the former as headways increase. The evidence does not distinguish direction of
travel or time of day, although we suspect the outward journey will have dominated, and wemight expect displacement time multipliers to depend upon these. The differences between
earlier and later displacement times would seem to relate to the outward journey but are inany event slight enough to be ignored.

6.

This is an advantage of the multivariate approach of meta-analysis rather than the simple
tabulations that are common in more conventional literature reviews.

36

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Railways in the UK get around the problem of the headway value representing two
different effects. They use a displacement time value for those who plan their journey, with agreater proportion planning as headways increase. This indicates the inconvenience of not
being able to travel at the desired time. For those who arrive at random, which is more likely
at more frequent services, headway is converted into waiting time and a wait time multiplierused to represent the inconvenience. However, there is little evidence of how travellers
choose between planned and random arrivals.
4.3

Interchange

We have already covered the wait and walk time involved in interchange. Here we
consider the fixed penalty involved in having to transfer between vehicles. This arises
because of the hassle and risks involved independent of any walking and waiting time. Thus
there is a risk that the next service is missed whilst any activities being undertaken will haveto be interrupted.
Summary of Official Interchange Penalties
Official values are comparatively rare for transfer penalties. They are 10 minutes or lesswith variation by type of interchange. The penalties used in New York City and Toronto fit
with this range whilst Transport for London (Transport for London, 2013) uses a 3½ minutepenalty for transfer between underground services and 5 minutes for transfer between
underground and rail.
Review of Interchange Penalty Evidence
There are three components to an interchange; walking between services, an amount of
waiting and a fixed penalty for the inconvenience and risks involved. Wallis et al. (2013)stated that, “Many studies on transfers do not clearly distinguish between these threetransfer components” which limits the amount of usable information available.
Wardman (2001) also recognised this problem in the literature. He distinguishedbetween studies which estimated a pure interchange penalty independent of time effects,
those that simply estimated an interchange variable without any separate connection time
and those that estimated an interchange penalty and allowed for connection time but without
any additional weighting of the latter. The latter two were, as expected, larger than the purepenalty and averaged around 30 minutes whereas the 8 observations relating to purepenalties were found to average 17.6 minutes. A meta-model was developed on 1116 money
values of a range of variables, including 47 interchange values. It found interchange values
to vary with purpose and region. The implied pure transfer penalties are set out in Table 13.
Table 13. Implied Transfer Penalties (Wardman, 2001)
Kilometres

5

25

100

250

Commute

6.9

5.8

5.0

4.5

Commute SE

5.0

4.2

3.6

3.3

Other

13.7

11.5

9.9

9.0

Other SE

10.0

8.4

7.2

6.5

The time multipliers fall since the money value of time increased with distance but themoney values of the pure interchange penalty did not. Those in the South East (SE) havelower values, presumably due to a greater familiarity with the rail network as a result of

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

greater usage whereupon the risks and uncertainties involved in interchange will be lesswhilst the more frequent onward
Wallis et al. (2013) cover 17 Australian studies and 63 values but only one New Zealandstudy yielding one value. Most studies estimated an interchange ‘effect’ containing the wait
time and this was removed to leave a pure penalty. However, the approximations involved inthis should be borne in mind.
The peak interchange penalties were 4 minutes for the same mode and 9 minutes
between modes. The corresponding off-peak figures were 12.5 for the same mode and 17
minutes for different modes. It is plausible that the penalty is higher between modes. As forthe high off-peak values, this might be because travel time in the peak has a higher
disutility, passengers in the peak are frequent users and hence interchange will be morefamiliar, and the higher frequencies in the peak mean the risks associated with interchange
are less.
Douglas and Jones (2013) review 17 interchange studies covering Australia and the UK.
These largely overlap the Wallis et al. (2013) and Wardman (2001) reviews. What isparticularly noteworthy about this study is providing more detail of how the interchange
penalty might vary. The reported penalties are contained in Table 14 for bus users and train
users. The penalties tend to be larger for longer distance. As expected, rail users find a crossplatform interchange to be less onerous than an ‘up and down’ transfer to another platform.
Bus users are more averse to rail interchange, perhaps due to unfamiliarity. Similarly, railusers have a larger dislike of bus interchange than do bus users. However, even bus users
have quite large bus interchange penalties perhaps because transfer is relative uncommon bybus.
Table 14. Transfer Penalty Variations (Douglas and Jones, 2013)

Rail Cross Platform

Bus
Short
9.0

Bus
Medium
13.7

Bus
All
12.5

Rail ‘Up and Down’

11.3

13.6

12.9

9.5

9.3

9.3

Bus to Rail

11.1

16.6

15.1

15.8

19.3

17.5

Bus to Bus

14.8

14.6

14.5

18.1

28.6

23.3

Transfer

Rail
Short
6.8

Rail
Medium
7.2

Rail
All
6.9

Wardman and Shires (2000) report a joint RP-SP model to explain the three components
of interchange. The penalty was found to vary with journey duration, flow type and whether
it was the first or second transfer. The second transfer had a smaller effect than the first.
However, there was no difference according to whether the connecting train was on the same
platform or another. Noticeably, they found some evidence that SP based transfer penalties
were larger than those obtained from RP data. The interchange penalties implied by theirmodel are reported in Table 15. Unsurprisingly, penalties are lower in the dense South East
network, where frequencies and familiarity are high. For suburban journeys, the penalties arein line with other evidence.

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Table 15. Implied Transfer Penalties (Wardman and Shires, 2000)
Journey
Duration
30 minutes

Inter Urbanst
1 change
9.1South Eastst
1 change
7.5

Inter Urbannd
2 change
5.8

60 minutes
120 minutes

11.1

9.1

7.0

15.1

12.3

9.4

180 minutes

19.1

n/a

11.9

240 minutes

23.1

n/a

14.3

300 minutes

27.1

n/a

16.8

The Raveau et al. (2013) metro route choice models for London and Santiago discussed
at the Roundtable provide interesting insights into variations in transfer penalties. Even
though in principle these penalties are independent of the amount of transfer time, there
does seem to be variation with the amount of effort involved. Nonetheless, the variations
with effort are slight; we would be surprised if they were large. The penalties for peak travel
fit with other evidence and again off-peak travellers are found to have higher values. Similar
results were found by Navarrete and Ortúzar (2013) for the multi-modal transit system in
Santiago.
Table 16. Metro Transfer Penalties(Raveau et al., 2013)
LondonSantiago

AM PeakCommute

Off Peak Non
CommuteAM PeakCommute

Off Peak Non
CommuteAscending Assisted

6.08

12.36

8.72

13.49

Ascending Semi-Assisted

7.11

14.46

n.a.

n.a.

Ascending Unassisted

7.70

15.66

10.30

15.95

Descending Assisted

5.24

10.65

5.84

9.05

Descending Semi-Assisted

6.28

12.76

n.a.

n.a.

Descending Unassisted

6.86

13.95

7.43

11.51

Note: Assisted means that an escalator or elevator can be used for all changes of level whereas they can only be
used for part of the change of level under semi-assisted.

Conclusions on Interchange Penalties
Litman (2014) states that “transfers are estimated to impose penalties equivalent to 515 minutes of in-vehicle time”. This is expected to be at the lower end where good
information and comfortable waiting conditions are provided and there is a minimum ofinsecurity, stress and effort. We concur with this statement in the light of the evidence
covered here and note the consistency between the evidence based and official and usedtransfer penalties.
There is evidence that commuters have lower transfer penalties than other travellers andthis might be through a familiarity effect which was apparent in other findings. The evidence
on the distance effect is not consistent, but it is very limited. There is evidence that shows
worse transfers have larger penalties, as is the case for between modes.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

4.4

Reliability

Reliability is, unlike the other convenience factors covered here, as much an issue for car
travel as it is for public transport. As such, a considerable amount of evidence relates to car.
Nonetheless, this is an area where there is a relatively large amount of public transport
evidence, and much of it is comparatively recent.
Another aspect in which reliability is different to the other convenience attributes is thatit has been measured and valued in a number of different ways. These are:Mean lateness on schedule, which was the first measured employed. Rather than offer
a range of times, as is now customary, this method typically stated that the service
would be X minutes late one in Y times.
Schedule delay early (SDE) and schedule delay late (SDL). These are, across n arrival
times, the mean level of earliness and lateness relative to the preferred arrival time.
The standard deviation of travel time (SD), expressed across n arrival times. The ratioof the value of the standard deviation of travel time and the value of mean travel time
is termed the Reliability Ratio (RR)7.

Summary of Official Reliability Values
Official values for public transport are either based around mean lateness or the RR. The
former exhibits a large range, from 1.5 to 6 but is generally between 2 and 4. The RR tends
to be in the range 0.4 to 0.7, but with the 1.4 for the UK an exception.
Review of Reliability Multiplier Evidence
Wardman (2013) reports evidence on reliability related values covering Europe. An
immediate issue with the scheduling (SDE and SDL) and mean-variance (RR) terms,
originally pointed out by Tseng (2008), is that some models specify either the schedulingvariables or the standard deviation of travel time whilst others include both. In the latter
case, the effect attributed to the scheduling variables and to the variance will obviously beless than in the former case where the effect is not ‘shared out’. The issue does not arise
with the late time variable.
Table 17 provides multipliers for SDE, SDL and RR when the scheduling variables andthe spread variables are specified on their own (Alone) and also when both term are specified(Both). Since we simply cannot report the average values across the Alone and Both model
specifications, because this is neither one thing nor the other, the subsequent tabulations
provided here are therefore for models which specified either the scheduling terms or the
spread (Alone). This would be most appropriate for practical forecasting where
accommodating just one reliability variable provides enough challenges let alone two!
It can be seen that, as expected, the multipliers for the Both observations are somewhat
less than for the Alone observations

7.

40

To add confusion, this approach has traditionally been referred to as the mean-varianceapproach.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Table 17. Reliability Multipliers by Model Specification
Attribute

Alone

Both

All

SDE

0.86:0.07:48

0.35:0.04:6

0.81:0.07:54

SDL

1.94:0.14:54

1.31:0.16:16

1.80:0.12:70

RR

1.02:0.13:31

0.66:0.14:14

0.91:0.10:45

Note: Mean, standard error of the mean and number of observations reported.

Bates (2001) demonstrated the following relationship between the RR and theparameters of the scheduling approach:

𝛽
𝛼

(

𝛾
)
𝛽

α relates to mean travel time, β to SDE and γ to SDL. Although strictly speaking thisrelationship is only applicable where the traveller has a continuous choice of departure times,
it is nonetheless illuminating to consider whether this theoretical relationship between themean-variance approach and scheduling approaches holds in practice.
Taking α to be one and with average values for β and μ of 0.86 and 1.94 from Table 17,
the implied RR is 1.02. This is exactly the figure reported in Table 17 for the mean value for
RR of 1.02.
Table 18 illustrates how the reliability multipliers vary across the European countries
covered. We have combined the SDL and late multipliers on the grounds of sample size.
There is considerable variation across countries, much more than for the other conveniencevariables, and this might be because of the inherently greater challenges involved in valuing
reliability. In particular, the UK seems to be an outlier with the irrational mean SDE value
and the very large SDL/Late values which may well be due to the dominance of meanlateness in the latter sample. We note that the late values were often obtained from SP
exercises that specified one service X minutes late one in Y times. However, uncertainties
surrounding how respondents interpreted lateness for the (Y-1)/Y occasions could well have
led to inflated valuation estimates.
Table 18. Reliability Multipliers by Country

Denmark

SDE

SDL/Late

RR-

2.02:0.10:8-

Netherlands

0.97:0.09:26

1.52:0.19:23

0.85:0.26:2

Norway0.72:0.29:4

2.43:0.30:13

0.20:0.06:3

Sweden0.77:0.19:5

2.88:0.56:10

0.59:0.19:3

UK

1.20:0.46:4

3.70:0.44:19

1.21:0.16:22

All Other

0.52:0.07:9

1.28:0.17:8

0.98:0.0:1

Note: For SDE, SDL and RR valuations estimated ‘Alone’. Mean, standard error of the mean and number ofobservations reported.

Table 19 demonstrates some large but not entirely consistent variations by journey
purpose. For mean lateness, leisure travellers have the highest values which is also the casefor RR whereas commuters have the largest value of SDL and business travellers are
particularly averse to arriving early.

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Table 19. Reliability Multipliers by Journey Purpose
Attribute
Late
SDE
SDL
RR

All
3.24:0.39:27
0.86:0.07:48
1.94:0.14:54
1.02:0.13:31

Commute3.53:0.75:6
0.82:0.09:26
1.91:0.10:25
1.27:0.25:6

Leisure4.95:0.97:7
0.68:0.11:8
1.83:0.39:11
1.34:0.28:10

Business
2.33:0.58:3
1.18:0.22:9
1.49:0.30:9
0.67:0.35:2

Other
2.23:0.32:11
0.77:0.23:5
2.61:0.27:9
0.71:0.15:13

Note: For SDE, SDL and RR valuations estimated ‘Alone’. Mean, standard error of the mean and number ofobservations reported. Other covers a mix of purposes.

Table 20 is based on mode users valuing the mode they used. It reveals that the values
do not vary greatly between rail and bus, with the possible exception of SDL, but the limited
sample sizes should be borne in mind.
Table 20. Multipliers by Mode
Attribute

All

Bus

Train

Late

4.10:0.44:37

3.63:0.09:3

3.88:1.05:7

SDE

0.86:0.07:48

0.59:0.41:2

0.53:0.10:7

SDL

1.94:0.14:54

3.03:0.44:6

2.17:0.28:9

RR

1.02:0.13:31

0.96:0.30:5

0.77:0.16:3

Note: For SDE, SDL and RR valuations estimated ‘Alone’. Mean, standard error of the mean and number ofobservations reported.

The meta-model reported in Wardman (2013) estimated to a very large data set of
multipliers contained around 200 reliability observations. It took account of the ‘Alone’ and‘Both’ effects discussed above. It found the reliability values to fall with distance, and we canwell understand that unreliability is expected, accepted and allowed for more for longer
distance journeys. A strong positive effect was found for the late multiplier for leisure travel.
Although reported in Table 21, we would be inclined to ignore this quite extreme effect,
possibly attributable to the lack of clarity on arrival times for the (Y-1)/Y times the service is
not late. Otherwise the multipliers seem sensible.
Table 21. Implied Reliability Multipliers for Train and Bus (Wardman, 2013)
Distance

5

25

100

250

LATE
Non Leisure
Leisure

3.59
6.71

2.82
5.28

2.30
4.30

2.00
3.75

RR
All

0.80

0.63

0.51

0.45

SDE
All

1.02

0.80

0.65

0.57

SDL
All

2.17

1.71

1.39

1.21

Note: For SDE, SDL and RR valuations estimated ‘Alone’.

The values so far cover European experience, but there have been a number of reviews
that cover broader international evidence.
The Wallis et al. (2013) review covered 4 New Zealand studies yielding 4 values of meanlateness and 6 Australian studies yielding 6 values. No distinction is made between bus and42

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

train, or between lateness at the stop or final destination, although the authors point out that
there is some uncertainty as to whether the late time relates to the origin or destination
arrival. The mean lateness figures were 2.7 for New Zealand and 3.6 for Australia.
With regard to the reliability ratio, Bates et al. (2001) stated that, “values around 1.3
appear plausible for car travel; somewhat higher may be appropriate for scheduled public
transport but values above 2 are unlikely”.
Carrion and Levinson (2012) conducted a worldwide review of reliability evidence. This isbased on the RR, covering 17 studies and yielding 68 observations that were entered into a
meta-analysis, although it is not restricted solely to public transport. The RR averages 1.2
across studies, although this varies enormously from 0.10 to 3.29. The meta-analysis
specified variables to represent time of day, data type, choice dimension, region and whether
the reliability values was from a model that allowed for unobserved heterogeneity. No
significant effects of note were obtained.
Tseng (2008) also conducted a worldwide review of reliability evidence covering 16
studies. This study and the Carrion and Levinson (2012) review have 9 studies in common,
although this study additionally covers values of SDE and SDL.
The RR was found to average 1.33 with a standard deviation of 0.68 across 74
observations. This varies between 1.46 in the 59 cases where no scheduling terms were
specified in the estimated model to 0.81 in the 15 cases where they were. The former figureof 1.46 is higher than the 1.02 of Table 17 although the pattern of results is similar.
The mean value of SDL was 1.65 with a standard deviation of 1.39 across 67
observations, with the corresponding figures for SDE being 0.75, 0.40 and 69. SDE varied
little between commuting and other trips and between public and private transport. For SDL,
we find the commuting value to be somewhat larger at 1.99 from 44 observations than the1.01 from 23 observations for other trips. This is not surprising although not apparent in theEuropean evidence reviewed above. Similarly, private transport had a mean SDL value of
1.83 from 48 observations somewhat larger than the 1.20 from the 19 public transportobservations.
It was also found that the figures depended upon whether the estimated model
contained another reliability variable. Where SDE and SDL were specified on their own, theirmean values were 0.81 from 54 SDE observations and 1.77 from 55 SDL observations. These
fall to 0.53 from 15 SDE observations and 1.13 from 12 SDL observations when otherreliability terms entered the model. This pattern of results, and particularly the multipliers
where there is no standard deviation term, are highly consistent with the European evidence
discussed above.
Meta-models were estimated to the RR, SDE and SDL observations. Explanatory
variables were data type, choice type, mode, purpose, utility specification, and travel timemeasurement. The models were somewhat more successful than those of Carrion andLevinson (2012) in recovering significant effects. The values implied by the model exhibited
considerable variations.
Based on RR or SDE/SDL being the only variables specified, RR was 1.71 for all trips andpurposes (where the model did not specify terms for purpose and mode). This is very muchlarger than the implied RR multipliers in Table 21 based on the Wardman (2013) metaanalysis.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

The implied values of SDE and SDL for public transport commuting were 0.51 and 3.37.
These fell to 0.41 and 2.41 respectively for other trips. Again, these are not entirely
consistent with the implied SDE and SDL multipliers in Table 21 based entirely on European
evidence.
Wardman and Batley (2014) review British evidence on the late time multiplier. Whilst it
covers much of the material considered in Wardman (2013) the two are not identical interms of British evidence. The meta-model estimated to 41 late time multipliers impliedvalues of 3.42 for inter-urban non-commuting, 3.92 for suburban commuting and 2.26 forsuburban non-commuting.
Finally, we cover recent work conducted in the Netherlands which had a strong emphasison the valuation of reliability. Table 66 of their report (Significance et al., 2012) provides aninteresting comparison of their RR estimates against other evidence. Much of the latter iscovered in other reviews here so we report their new evidence along with the ‘expert
workshop of 2004’ evidence they cite. The results are reported in Table 22.
The expert opinion multipliers are probably heavily influenced by UK evidence, and we
noted in Table 18 above that the UK RR evidence is somewhat out of line with otherevidence. If we take the implied multipliers of Table 21 for the shorter journeys as more
appropriate for comparison, then these new Dutch values, at least for commuting and other,would seem consistent with the European meta-analysis evidence.
Table 22. New Netherlands Reliability Ratio Evidence
Train

Bus/TramCar

New Study
CommutingBusiness
Other

0.4
1.1
0.6

0.4
1.1
0.6

0.4
1.1
0.6

Expert Opinion

1.4

1.4

0.8

Conclusions on Reliability Evidence
There have been three measures of reliability used in valuation. The one that is the moststraightforward to apply is the multiplier for mean lateness on schedule. This has been widelyused in the UK and underpins the regulatory mechanism, driving fines and compensation
payments on operator and infrastructure providers. The issue here though is that it does notallow for different distributions of lateness or the fact that regularly late trains can to someextent be anticipated and hence the consequences are less.
The standard deviation of travel times or the standard deviation of lateness on schedulecan be objectively measured so they too could be readily incorporated in policy and planning
decision making. Indeed, both late time multipliers and RR form the basis of official
valuations.
However, approaches based around SDE and SDL are less easily implemented given thatthey require information on preferred arrival times which cannot be readily measured andinstead requires survey based evidence.
It seems that the reliability evidence is more diverse than for other attributes, eventhough there is quite a lot of it, and we attribute this to the inherently greater difficulties in
estimating values of reliability terms and perhaps also because it can be a contentious issue
44

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

which might attract protest responses in survey based evidence. We note that empiricalevidence relating to reliability is almost entirely SP based.
Nonetheless, it is clear that late arrivals are important, and are most likely the largest
multipliers of all the convenience terms. Litman (2014) recommends that, “each minute ofdelay beyond the published schedule should be valued at 3-5 times the standard in-vehicletime”. This perhaps extends to too high values but it would seem the late time multiplierexceeds the walk and wait time multipliers of 2 and the crowding multipliers discussed in thenext section, even if they contain an element of protest. We should also point out that wewould expect mean lateness to be less than the value of SDL, on the grounds that SDL isalways lateness whilst, as a result of scheduling constraints, lateness on schedule could
actually move some people nearer to their desired arrival time!
It is encouraging to have found a high degree of consistency amongst the mean
estimated RR and that implied by the SDL and SDE values. Whilst the evidence on the RR
across studies is quite variable, it does seem to be less than the figure attributed to it by‘expert opinion’.
Finally, we point out that much of the empirical work relates to late arrivals at thedestination. The official Australian and New Zealand values distinguish between lateness atthe destination and lateness at the point where public transport is accessed but this is aneglected aspect.
4.5

Crowding Convenience8

Crowding is a feature of public transport commuting journeys the world over, whether bytrain or bus. In some cases, particularly major metropolis and also in regional centres,
standing is a common occurrence on buses but especially trains and metros. Whilst theinconvenience of standing can be readily appreciated, and can be expected to increase thevalue of travel time appreciably, crowding will also impact on those seated to the extent they
will also incur an increased inconvenience and discomfort which will lead to higher values oftime.
Traditionally, the measure used to represent crowding was load factor. This is fine forthe inconvenience incurred by seated passengers as occupancy increases. However, asuperior means of representing crowded conditions for those having to stand is in terms ofpassengers per metre squared. Trains can have high load factors but, because of a small
amount of seating and ample standing space, the crowding conditions are not as bad as thehigh load factor might imply.
The common convention in this area is that although penalties on seated passengers canoccur before a train is full, and a figure of 70% seems to be when the inconvenience is felt tostart, standing penalties are not relevant at load factors less than 100% since if anyonechooses to stand when there are seats free then they are not particularly averse to standing.
Summary of Official Crowding Multipliers

8.

Some might regard crowding to be more a comfort than a convenience factor. We do not wish
to get into semantics here, and indeed crowding does impact on the comfort dimension.
However, the view of the Roundtable was that it is clearly inconvenient to have to stand; it
was extensively discussed at the Roundtable and hence is covered here. Crowded conditions
also extend walking times, in-vehicle times and make waiting time more onerous.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

There are some small multipliers for seated time between around 70% and 100% loadfactor. However, when seated there seem to be two different views of the world. In somecountries, even in very crowded conditions, the multiplier for crowding when seated would beless than 1.5. In the UK, it could be over 2. As far as standing multipliers are concerned,
there is a wide range, from around 1.4 to over 2.5 in crush conditions. As with reliability, thisis an area where there is a wide range of multipliers.
Review of Crowding Multiplier Evidence
Wardman and Whelan (2011) report the most extensive review of crowding multipliers,
albeit exclusively based around British evidence. They covered 17 UK studies spanning 20
years and yielding 208 valuations. From the meta-analysis model estimated, the crowding
multipliers were found to vary with load factor and journey purpose. The implied multipliers
are set out in Table 23 and can be very large. Presumably the multipliers are lower forcommuters since they are more resigned to crowding!
Table 23. Implied Crowding Multipliers(Wardman and Whelan, 2011)
Seated MultiplierStanding Multipliers

LF

CommuteLeisureLF

CommuteLeisure

50%

0.86

1.04

75%

0.95

1.14

100%

1.05

1.26

100%

1.62

1.94

125%
150%

1.16

1.39

125%

1.79

2.15

1.27

1.53

150%

1.99

2.39

175%

1.40

1.69

175%

2.20

2.64

200%

1.55

1.86

200%

2.44

2.93

The railways in Britain have now moved to the superior means of representing crowding
conditions in terms of passengers per metre squared. The PDFH values (ATOC, 2013) for
standing are largely driven by the work of MVA (2008) and Whelan and Crockett (2009) who
conducted an innovative SP exercise involving trade-offs between time and crowding where
crowding levels were clearly set out graphically and in written explanation. They
recommended the crowding penalties set out in Table 24. Values did not vary by purposes
but did vary by flow type. It is commonly argued that those in London and the South East
are more accustomed to crowding and hence their values are lower whilst for the generally
somewhat longer inter-urban journeys crowding will be more unpalatable. It can be seen thatsome large multipliers are implied even for sitting when there are high levels of crowding.

46

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Table 24. Estimated Crowding Multipliers
Pass/m2

London and SE

0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
4.5
5.0
6.0

Regional

Inter Urban

Sit

Stand

Sit

Stand

Sit

Stand

1.00
1.05
1.09
1.14
1.18
1.23
1.27
1.32
1.36
1.41
1.45
1.54

1.43
1.50
1.56
1.63
1.69
1.76
1.82
1.89
1.95
2.02
2.08
2.21

1.00
1.12
1.24
1.36
1.48
1.60
1.72
1.84
1.96
2.08
2.20
2.44

1.34
1.48
1.61
1.75
1.88
2.02
2.16
2.30
2.43
2.57
2.70
2.97

1.00
1.06
1.11
1.17
1.23
1.29
1.34
1.40
1.46
1.52
1.57
1.69

1.77
1.79
1.81
1.83
1.85
1.87
1.89
1.91
1.92
1.94
1.96
2.00

Wallis et al. (2013) found only a limited amount of Australian and New Zealandevidence. They report 2 Australian observations from seated in crowded conditions with amean multiplier of 1.23. This increases to 1.62 for 6 Australian observations for standing incrowded conditions, with the corresponding figure of 1.49 across 4 New Zealandobservations, with a mean multiplier of 2.0 for 3 observations relating to standing in crush
conditions.
Haywood and Koning (2013) report on a contingent valuation exercise, discussed at theRoundtable meeting, where travellers on the Paris metro could forego travel time in returnfor less crowding. Seven levels of crowding were presented. The multipliers for the different
levels of crowding are presented in Table 25.
Table 25. Time Multipliers on Paris Metro
Multiplier
Evening Peak0.93
(0.78-1.08)

0

1.00(0.91-1.08)

MultiplierMorning Peak
1.02
(0.93-1.12)

1

1.00

1.00

1.00

1.05
(0.97-1.13)
1.18(1.07-1.28)
1.26(1.13-1.39)
1.40(1.25-1.56)
1.57(1.35-1.80)

1.06(0.96-1.15)
1.19(1.07-1.31)
1.24(1.10-1.38)
1.52(1.33-1.71)
1.46(1.20-1.73)

1.06(0.91-1.21)
1.18(0.99-1.36)
1.29(1.05-1.53)
1.31(1.06-1.56)
1.67(1.27-2.06)

Pass/m

2
2.5
3
4
6

2

MultiplierNote: 95% confidence intervals in brackets. The 2-6 pass/m2 figures relate to standing and the 0-1pass/m2 relates
to seating.

There are some, but generally slight, differences between the time multiplier in themorning and evening peaks. The figures are somewhat lower than those so far discussed.
Kroes et al. (2013) provided a resource paper as part of this Roundtable, reporting thefindings of an extensive study of crowding in Paris. This covered rail, metro, tramway andSummary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 201447

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

bus. Two SP exercises were used; one based around the idea of catching the first but
crowded arrival or waiting for a less crowded train, and the other offering a trade-off
between two options with different travel times and crowding levels. In addition, there wasexperimentation with SP methods.
Although the best model was one that specified a fixed effect per trip rather than a time
multiplier, for practical reasons a model with crowding multipliers was developed. The
multipliers split by mode are reported in Table 26.
The multipliers for seated, which here largely relate to commuters, bear a reasonable
resemblance to those in Table 23. However, the standing multipliers are somewhat lower andvery much in line with the other Paris values in Table 25.
Table 26. Paris Crowding Penalties (Kroes et al., 2013)
Load

ALL
Seat

METRO
Stand

Seat

TRAIN+RER

Stand

Seat

Stand

BUS+TRAM
Seat

Stand

25%

1.000

1.000

1.000

1.000

50%

1.000

1.000

1.000

1.000

75%

1.000

1.000

1.000

1.000

100%

1.083

125%

1.165

1.289

1.155

1.270

1.145

1.261

1.204

1.342

150%

1.248

1.394

1.232

1.362

1.218

1.358

1.307

1.467

200%

1.330

1.499

1.309

1.453

1.290

1.456

1.409

1.593

250%

1.413

1.604

1.386

1.545

1.363

1.553

1.511

1.718

1.077

1.073

1.102

Li and Hensher (2011) provide a review of willingness to pay evidence relating to
crowding but it does not add to what is covered elsewhere here.
Finally, we are aware of evidence from a country famous for its sometimes very highdegree of rail overcrowding. Valuations from the Japanese CBA Manual for Rail, as discussed
in the resource paper by Kato (2014), and a rail route choice RP model for commuting trips(Morichi et al. 2001) are presented in Table 27. The values from these two Japanese sources
are not only very similar but are broadly in line with the Paris evidence.
Table 27. Japanese Crowding Multipliers
Multiplier
Load Factor

CBA
ManualMorichi et al.
(2001)

110%

1.04

1.11

140%

1.06

1.13

170%

1.10

1.27

200%

1.16

1.37

230%

1.37

1.49

260%

1.62

1.62

Note: The load factors are defined with regard to seating and standing capacity and so will be lower than the moreusual definition relative to seating capacity.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Conclusions on Crowding Multipliers
The evidence on crowding values in line with the official values is bimodal. Some
evidence points to crowding multipliers that would imply that standing rivals late time interms of inconvenience whilst other evidence points to lower multipliers somewhat less thanthe value of 2 commonly ascribed to walk and wait time. From a theoretical perspective, we
could argue that crowding multipliers ought to be high, on the grounds it can reasonably be
expected to be worse than walking and waiting, but we could also argue that we travellers
are observed to stand even when seats are available. One thing is for sure though; thecrowding multipliers unequivocally increase with the degree of crowding!
Litman (2014) concludes that the value of transit travel time is doubled when standing
and further doubled when standing in a crowded bus or train. Our view is that this is notsupported by the evidence.
Kroes et al. (2013) concluded in their study of crowding penalties in Paris:“It is clear that more value of crowding studies, conducted in similar and different
contexts, are needed before more definitive and more general conclusions can be
drawn with respect to the value of crowding in public transport”
It would be hard to argue with this. Well focused and large scale RP exercises andobservations of actual behaviour might be able to cast more light on the issue. In thisregard, we note the Japanese RP based crowding penalties are relatively low.
4.6

The Convenience of Information

The presence (absence) of information adds to (diminishes from) public transport
convenience in several respects. Travellers do not like uncertainties surrounding how to use
and pay for public transport, what to do when there are alternative possibilities or whenthings go wrong, and not knowing the causes of any irregularities in service. Information can
reduce the stress of waiting or interchanging and allow travellers to make better use of theirtime. There might be a value for the existence of information, even if it is not used, since it
provides reassurance in the event it is needed. In the extreme, lack of information about apublic transport product inevitably means it will not be purchased 9.
Those who are unfamiliar with public transport, or at least with the particular journey
being made, can be expected to benefit most from the availability of suitable reliable
information, as might those who are making complex inter-modal journeys, whilst in this
digital age there are ever increasing expectations that information is not only of a highstandard but is easily accessed. In recent years, there has been considerable investment in
improving the information available to public transport users (Litman, 2014), in large partdue to technological developments.
There are different means by which public transport users can obtain information. Somehas to be actively sought, such as that available via the internet and mobile phones, fromtravel information centres and phone hotlines, and email and text alerts, either prior tostarting a journey or during it, whilst other information is routinely present in the course of a9.

In some cases there are benefits (to operators) from the absence of information. For example,
price discrimination is more effective if, say, low cost sensitivity business travellers are notfully aware of the presence of tickets targetted at more price sensitive segments of themarket.

Summary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 201449

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

journey, such as real time information displays, signage, information points, staff, posters,announcements, departure boards and printed matter. The information can relate to a rangeof different aspects of a journey, such as how to access and egress public transport andsystem navigation, timetable details, prices and how to pay, what facilities are present
during the journey and what to do when things go wrong.
There might well be interactions between the valuations of different information sources.
For example, the presence of mobile information may well reduce the value of informationfrom station staff, signs and displays, whilst providing information on-vehicle may reduce thevalue of information provided at stations and stops.
Summary of Official Information Values
Table 1 contains the official multiplier evidence we have identified for the time related
aspects of convenience. We are not aware of official guidance in the context of information
convenience. This is partly because of the diverse nature of information and partly because it
is not a prominent feature of scheme appraisal. However, what is in our understanding themost extensive set of information values in use in transport scheme appraisal, as
recommended by Transport for London, is considered below.
Review of Information Valuation Evidence
There have been a large number of SP studies which have covered some aspect of
information provision. We have inevitably made extensive use in this document of review
material, but we are not aware of a comprehensive review of the valuation of information
provision. To some extent this is because of the more diverse nature of the improvements
being valued, although the fact that some developments in information provision are quite
recent and will form a more modest proportion of generalised cost than other aspects of
convenience are also contributory factors. Litman (2014) discusses a variety of real-world
improvements in information provision and travellers’ favourable responses to them.
There is little evidence on valuations of some aspects of information, such as on how to
pay and what to do when journeys are disrupted. The evidence tends to relate to thevaluation of real time arrival information and timetable information.
Information is different to the other attributes we have here covered. Whilst it
undoubtedly influences the convenience of using public transport, it does not always operate
as a multiplier on the value of time in the same way as an interchange penalty. In many
circumstances it is more of a fixed benefit, although not necessarily independent of journey
length, such as might be expected of information on departure times, routes and fares, but it
can interact with other valuations in a multiplier fashion, such as when arrival or
performance information reduces the stress of waiting time and anxieties of travel time.
Of particular relevance here is the possible presence of a ‘package’ effect. It is notuncommon that the information is considered alongside a wide range of other ‘soft factors’
and that the sum of the valuations of the separate attributes exceeds the valuation of all
attributes estimated as a package (Jones, 1997). This might be because of: interactions, asmentioned above; halo effects, whereby improvements in one attribute are taken to imply
improvements in another; budget effects, where travellers are prepared to pay for
improvements to some attributes but not all to the same pro-rata extent; or simply anartefact of the artificial nature of SP experiments in what is a challenging valuation context
and one that might attract strategic responses.

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Given the absence of review material, and because values have often been obtained inmoney units which are less transferable than the time multipliers considered previously, we
here consider a selection of illustrative empirical evidence from the wide range available
before turning to Transport for London’s extensive set of recommendations which seem to be
the most comprehensive of any transport authority in the world.
Hensher and Prioni (2002) developed a service quality index for use in evaluating theoverall performance of bus operators. In the SP exercise undertaken to create parameters topopulate the index, 13 variables were simultaneously covered in each of three bus options
offered. The attributes ranged from time and cost through to on-board safety and thefriendliness of drivers. One of the attributes covered related to information; whether there
was timetable information or timetable information and a map at the bus stop. The results
obtained were counter-intuitive, with the former valued at 9.25 minutes and the latter at
6.15 minutes relative to no information. Whilst this might have been due to what appears to
be a highly complicated SP exercise, nonetheless even the lower of these two valuations
seems implausibly large.
Laird and Whelan (2007) report valuations of information for bus journeys after apackage effect had been estimated. The implied valuation of up-to-the-minute bus arrival
time information was 3.97 minutes per journey for leisure travellers and 1.97 minutes forcommuters. Again such values seem rather large.
The UK rail industry’s Passenger Demand Forecasting Handbook’s (PDFH)
recommendations distinguish between on-train and at-station facilities, which includes
information. Unfortunately, the recommendations for at-station facilities come in the form of
demand uplifts. Matters are little better for on-train information. Although expressed as valueof time multipliers, they only cover audibility of announcements and electronic displays and anumber of assumptions are made in converting monetary values into time units, particularly
given that the value of time depends upon distance.
Given the qualitative nature of many bus quality attributes, Douglas Economics (2014)
conducted an SP exercise in New Zealand that offered trade-offs between two bus options
described in terms of time, cost, service headway, bus vehicle quality and bus stop quality.
The latter two were characterised by a 5 star system (similar to that used to rate films andrestaurants) which included verbal descriptions of quality. The respondents’ ratings of theircurrent bus vehicle and bus stop quality were regressed on various relevant factors todetermine what influenced them. Thus the valuations of the ratings in the SP model could be
decomposed into the various influential factors. Whether the bus stop had a shelter, seating,real time information and a timetable influenced the ratings. The benefits of providing realtime information and a timetable were found to be worth 1.7 minutes or 6% of fare. This
increases to 4.3 minutes or 16% of fare when seating and shelter are provided.
This work built upon a previous study in Australia (Douglas Economics, 2006) which
involved nine point scales for each of 46 rail service attributes. This was converted into a %scale and the ratings were linked to the rating of time variation, thereby allowing values tobe obtained in time units. Table 28 reports time valuations for a range of train
improvements. Information is not the most important factor but nor is it the least.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Table 28. Value of Train Improvements from 60%-70%(minutes per journey) Source: Transport for London (2013)
Improvement

Value

Train Outside Appearance
Ease of Train Boarding
Seat Comfort
Smoothness of Ride
Quietness
Heating and Air Conditioning
Lighting
Cleanliness
Grafitti
On-train Announcements
Layout and Design

0.15
0.22
0.07
0.10
0.22
0.15
0.13
0.26
0.08
0.16
0.38

The valuations of station improvements reported in Table 29 are far less than for train
improvements, which is unsurprising given train travellers generally spend far longer on a
train than at the station. Taking the three information related terms together, they are joint
second in importance behind ticketing.
Table 29. Value of Station Improvements from 50%-60%(minute per journey) Source: Transport for London (2013)
Improvement

Value

Improvement

Value

Ease of Train On and Off

0.08

Grafitti

0.05

Platform Weather Protection

0.004

Toilets

0.01

Platform Seating

0.04

Safety0.06

Platform Surface

0.07

Staff

0.09

Subway/Overbridge

0.01

Car Park

0.01

Station Building

0.10

Car Park Drop Off

0.01

Lifts/Escalators

0.03

Taxi

0.01

Signing

0.05

Bus

0.02

Station Announcements

0.05

Bike

0.02

Information

0.03

Telephone

0.01

Station Lighting

0.03

Retail

0.05

Cleaning

0.13

Tickets

0.16This ratings based approach has attractions since otherwise diverse and categoricalattributes not easily measured or defined cannot be valued within an SP exercise. Real life
application requires that for an improvements that are planned then ratings of the before andafter situation are required.
What seems to us to be the most extensive set of recommended valuations relating to
information provision, and indeed to a wide range of other ‘soft factors’, is provided byTransport for London’s Business Case Development Manual (Transport for London, 2013).
This document “summarises the values which passengers place on a comprehensive list of
key service attributes”. Valuations of information are recommended for the underground, bus
and train and for information provided on-vehicle and at stations/stops. In some cases, thevaluations are based on ratings of information attributes whilst in other cases categoricalinformation levels are specified.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

We set out below the wide range of information related valuations recommended, partly
as inspiration that valuations can be provided for a wide range of information attributes andindeed other soft, comfort-related, factors.
The valuations recommended in the Business Case Development Manual are in money
units. To convert to time units, the recommended values of time are 14.7 pence per minutefor the underground, 15.8 pence per minute for rail and 12.8 pence per minute for bus.
Values relating to the ticket hall are not time dependent. Those for on-train are based ona typical 15 minute journey whilst the average platform wait time is 3½ minutes with one
minute on average of access time. These time dependent valuations should be amended
where the average durations of these variables is different.
Some valuations are linked to the scores obtained from Mystery Shopper Surveys (MSS)
or Staff and Information Surveys (SIS). These are reported in Table 30 for information
provided to underground users in the station ticket hall, station access, station platform andon-train.
Thus an improvement in electronic displays in carriages that led the ratings to improvefrom 20% to 50% would be worth 1.641 pence. The valuations relating to on-train provision
tend to be somewhat larger, as is to be expected given the relative amount of time spent on
the train. Noticeably, information related to the next train and particularly to service
disruption are highly valued.
Table 31 presents the recommended values for underground users for information
provision represented in categorical form. Again, the benefits of providing information on
service disruption and next trains are the largest. Definitions of each level for each type of
information are given in the Business Case Development Manual Section E4.3

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Table 30. Underground Information Provision Benefits using MIS/SIS Scores(pence per passenger September 2013 prices) Source: Transport for London (2013)
Score

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Clarity of the PA announcer's delivery

SIS

0.351

0.340

0.308

0.263

0.213

0.171

0.131

0.094

0.059

0.027

0

Usefulness of the PA messages

SIS

0.325

0.278

0.235

0.196

0.160

0.127

0.096

0.069

0.044

0.021

0

Directional signing

MSS

0.433

0.395

0.363

0.334

0.298

0.244

0.191

0.140

0.091

0.046

0

Clocks

MSS

0.241

0.234

0.215

0.189

0.160

0.130

0.100

0.072

0.045

0.021

0

System disruption information

MSS

3.610

3.551

3.311

2.934

2.465

1.953

1.447

0.962

0.547

0.229

0

Next train information

MSS

3.097

2.734

2.368

2.010

1.665

1.337

0.933

0.605

0.349

0.152

0

LUL information leaflets

MSS

0.380

0.372

0.344

0.305

0.260

0.211

0.163

0.117

0.074

0.035

0

Clarity of the PA announcer's delivery

SIS

0.384

0.372

0.338

0.288

0.233

0.187

0.143

0.102

0.064

0.030

0

Usefulness of the PA messages

SIS

0.356

0.305

0.258

0.214

0.175

0.139

0.105

0.075

0.048

0.023

0

Directional signing

MSS

0.474

0.433

0.398

0.365

0.326

0.268

0.209

0.153

0.100

0.051

0

Clarity of the PA announcer's delivery

SIS

0.482

0.467

0.424

0.362

0.292

0.235

0.180

0.129

0.081

0.037

0

Usefulness of the PA messages

SIS

0.446

0.382

0.323

0.269

0.219

0.174

0.132

0.095

0.060

0.029

0

Directional signing

MSS

0.595

0.543

0.499

0.459

0.410

0.336

0.262

0.192

0.125

0.064

0

Clocks

MSS

0.266

0.261

0.242

0.215

0.183

0.150

0.116

0.084

0.053

0.025

0

Next train information

MSS

1.372

1.314

1.238

1.144

1.022

0.880

0.726

0.558

0.377

0.190

0

System disruption information

MSS

2.954

2.545

2.135

1.752

1.405

1.027

0.718

0.474

0.279

0.124

0

Clarity of driver's delivery over PA

SIS

3.478

3.396

3.274

3.120

2.938

2.731

2.503

2.173

1.491

0.765

0

Usefulness of PA messages on train

SIS

3.261

3.090

2.787

2.367

1.521

0.821

0.402

0.213

0.115

0.051

0

Interchange and next station information overtrain PA

SIS

3.261

3.090

2.787

2.367

1.521

0.821

0.402

0.213

0.115

0.051

0

Electronic displays in the carriages

MSS

5.175

5.050

4.809

4.398

3.830

3.168

2.538

1.974

1.376

0.697

0

Time of first PA announcement when a delay
occurs

MSS

3.158

2.978

2.740

2.477

2.185

1.761

1.373

1.003

0.656

0.317

0

Frequency of PA announcements when a delay
occurs

MSS

2.721

2.449

2.177

1.905

1.633

1.361

1.088

0.816

0.544

0.272

0

Station Ticket Hall

Station Access

Station Platform

Train

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Table 31. Underground Benefits(pence per passenger September 2013 prices)
1

2

3

4

0.351
0.326
0.461
5.781
6.193
0.361

0.035
0.160
0.000
1.823
2.451
0.000

0.000
0.000
0.000
0.527
0.321
0.000

0
0
0
0
0
0

0.384
0.634
0.440
0.361

0.038
0.133
0.305
0.000

0.000
0.008
0.000
0.000

0
0
0
0

0.446
0.959
0.613
5.948
0.482
0.552
0.361

0.104
0.335
0.000
0.456
0.000
0.382
0.000

0.000
0.020
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000

0
0
0
0
0
0
0

8.561

5.328

1.976

0

Station Ticket Hall
Audibility of the PA system
Ease of seeing signs
Information available via the help points
Service disruption notices in the ticket hall
Information on planned station and line closures
Information button in help points – speed of response
Station Access
Audibility of the PA system
Information available via the help points
Ease of seeing signs
Information button in help points
Station Platform
Audibility of the PA system
Information available via the help points
Information on the outside of the train
Next train information on platform displays
Disruption information on platform displays
Ease of seeing signs
Information button in help points
Train
Announcements of disruption on connecting lines

The recommended values for improvements to train, as opposed to underground,information are reproduced in Table 32. These largely relate to information on the next train
and on service disruptions and as for the other modes these are quite highly valued.
Table 32. Rail Improvements(pence per journey September 2013 prices) Source: Transport for London (2013)
Ticket Hall
Information about
Service Disruptions

No information in the ticket hall about service disruptions

0

Hand-written notices in the ticket hall showing service disruptions

14.31

Electronic display in the ticket hall showing service disruptions

17.31

No information about next train on the platform

0

Electronic information about next train arrival time, destination and all stations
where the train is stopping

14.83

No electronic display in carriages

0

Flat screen style display showing next station, final destination information andrelevant service disruption information

11.71

Public announcement impossible to hear, muffled or echoing

0

Public announcement message able to be heard

11.32

Platform Facilities
Next Train
Information
Train Information
Electronic Display

PA Announcements

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Turning to bus users, Table 33 reports the wide range of recommendations for
improvements to information provided at bus stops, bus stations, on buses and at busunderground interchanges. These are all for discrete levels of information. The values of the
improvements tend to be clustered in a fairly narrow range.
Table 33. Bus Improvements(Pence per Journey September 2013 Prices) Source: Transport for London (2013)
Bus Stop Information
Countdown signs

Mobile phone real-time
information

Spider Map
Local Map

No Countdown signCountdown displays up to the minute bus arrival times
Countdown displays up to the minute bus arrival times, diversions and delays
No information on phone about time of next bus or disruptions
By typing in code shown on bus stop, receive information sent to phone abouttime of next bus
By typing in code shown on bus stop, receive information sent to phone abouttime of next bus and any service delays
No diagrammatic map of bus routes serving the stop
Stop with diagrammatic map of bus routes serving the stop
No map of local information / services
Stop with map of local information / services

0
3.35
4.11
0
0.83

No public announcements
Public announcements that can clearly be heard
No staff at the station
Member of staff walking around bus station
Member of staff at information desk
No countdown signCountdown displays up to the minute bus departure times
Unclear of badly located signing, difficult to find your way around the bus station
Good signing, easy to find your way around the bus station
No display
Displays showing location of the stop for your bus

0
1.12
0
0.92
1.25
0
2.88
0
2.62
0
6.08

No electronic information inside the bus about the next stop
Electronic sign and voice announcement of the next stop
Electronic sign and voice announcement of the next stop and also connections
that can be made with other transport services, plus nearby attractions that canbe reached from that stop

0
2.34
2.54

1.39
0
4.63
0
4.52

Bus Station Information
Public Announcement
Staff providing bus
service information
Bus Service Information
Displayed on Screen
Finding way round bus
station: signs
Finding way round bus
station: maps
Bus Environment
Information provided
inside bus

Bus-Underground Interchange
Visual information on
bus service disruption

Signage at Interchange

56

No service disruption information in Underground station for bus services
Hand-written notices in Underground station about bus disruptions
Electronic information in the Underground station about disruptions to bus
services
No signs to bus and Underground services
Generally good signs between bus and Underground services, but additionalsigns would make it easier to find the way
Excellent signs giving a direct route between bus and Underground services

0
6.55
8.62
0
3.52
6.92

Summary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 2014

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Conclusions on Information Values
Although evidence relating to information levels is much more diverse than for otheraspects of convenience, a large amount of evidence exists, although no review study as far
as we are aware, and we have here considered some of the available evidence.
We feel it right to issue a word of warning in this context, since it is not unknown thatvalues can be implausibly large. Whether this is due to unaccounted for package effects or
simply strategic bias when the purpose of the relevant SP exercise is quite transparently tovalue information, care should be taken in estimation, interpretation and application. Carealso needs to be taken to account for interaction effects 10.
Having said that, credible results do exist and approaches based around rating scales
have proved popular because they allow transferability of results for variables which have nonatural units of measurement.
The findings suggest, as would be expected, that on-vehicle information is more
important than at-station or stop information. Information relating to disruptions seems
particularly important, as does information on next services. We should point out though thatlarge sums of money are being spent on real-time information on platforms and some bus
stops, but increasingly less on more traditional information such as paper maps posted on
stations and bus stops. Evidence is required to ensure that the appropriate policies are being
followed.
The extensive recommendations provided by Transport for London, not only for
information but a wide range of ‘soft factors’, should serve as an achievable aspiration moregenerally for practical transport appraisal and helping to ensure that authorities deliver bestvalue to the travelling population and taxpayer alike.
4.7

Summary

We have above considered each convenience attribute in isolation. Whilst we return tothe issue of interactions between valuations below, it is informative to summarise thisindividual evidence to determine what really matters most with regard to public transport
convenience of use, not least because this is where operators and funders can focus
attention on improvement.
Clearly, what matters most to individuals will depend on specific circumstances, such as
the current levels of attributes, the type of journey being undertaken and the travel
conditions, and of course cultural factors. Therefore in generalising the results, it seems thatthe most important convenience issues for public transport users are:10.



waiting in crowded conditions;

walking in crowded conditions;

walking that involves more than normal levels of effort;

travel time reliability.

It is conceivable that some of the Transport for London valuations might interact with theprovision of information by other means. For example, the value of next train information inticket halls (on-platforms) might well depend upon whether the information provided on
platforms (in ticket halls).

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Poor performance on these can be a significant deterrent to public transport use wherechoices are available or else will impact appreciably users’ wellbeing. The next mostimportant aspects of convenience are:
walking and waiting in normal conditions



having to stand while travelling, although its inconvenience might be expected to
exceed normal walking and waiting when there is severe overcrowding.



displacement time and headway, with displacement time being more of an issue
for longer journeys where planning is more commonplace and headway being
more important for shorter journeys where there is less planning and perhaps an
expectation of better frequencies.

The two variables that generally make the least contribution to convenience are:

the penalty involved in having to interchange

information provision

Our summary of the empirical evidence on the relative importance of the different
convenience multipliers is set out in Table 34.
Table 34. Summary of Importance of Convenience Multipliers

CONVENIENCE TERM

INDICATIVE MULTIPLIER

Late Time
Walking with more than normal effort
Waiting in Crowded Conditions
Walking in Crowded Conditions
Walking and Waiting in Normal Conditions
Standing (depending on conditions)
Headway
Displacement TimeInterchange Penalties
On-Vehicle Information
Off-Vehicle Information

58

3.0-5.0
4.0
2.5-4.0
2.0-3.5
1.75-2.0
1.50-2.0
0.5-0.8
0.4-0.6
5-15 mins<< 1 min<< 1 min

Summary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 2014

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

5. THE RESEARCH AGENDA

There seem to be two aspects to a forward research agenda in the area of valuing public
transport convenience

5.1

Consolidating and particularly adding to the evidence base on convenience
multipliers

Monitoring, validating and ex-post analysis of the use of the convenience
multipliers11
Adding to the Evidence Base

The Roundtable was of the view that there is insufficient use worldwide of

convenience multipliers to understand and appraise public transport. In part this is becauseeven in developed countries the cost-benefit analysis to evaluate transport investments,
planning and policies is not always routine, but the absence or unawareness of relevant
information cannot help matters.
The Roundtable also recognised that even where formal cost-benefit analysis procedures
are in use, there is a need to add further detail. We might expect the walk and wait time
multipliers to depend upon the conditions in which they are incurred. Whilst there are somenotable examples of allowing for this, considerably more insight could be obtained here. So
how do the various multiplier values covered here vary with the levels of the variables, withthe degree of crowding, with the travel environment, with the length of the journey, withjourney purpose and the like? The emphasis though must be on generating new evidence
that can be readily applied rather than providing insights into influential variables, such as
personal characteristics, that would be difficult or impossible to use in real world appraisal.
This research into conditions is important since it demonstrates how the ‘time costs’ of
travel can be reduced by reducing the time weight rather than the amount of time and, assome studies have indicated, it might in some circumstances be more cost effective to reduce
the time cost to achieve and effective time saving.
Another neglected area of research, although by no means confined to convenience
related variables, is that of examining thresholds, non-linearities and interactions. It may bethat target levels of convenience need to be achieved before, say, car users will entertain
using public transport, or that there is little point in improving convenience if fares areunacceptably high. So convenience multipliers for one attribute might depend upon the levelsof another attribute or in some way or another its own levels. Although probably more of anissue for comfort related variables, package effects might be present, whereupon the11.

Whilst this takes us into the world of forecasting, which was not the primary concern of thisRoundtable, values are used in forecasting and hence this process might inform on thereliability of the multipliers.

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VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

introduction of various improvements has a larger impact than the sum of each
introduced separately. The roundtable had the view that we can sometimes spend
too much time looking at separate parts and not the whole. Evidence on thesematters is scant, which is of concern if public transport ‘retailers’ have to get all aspects of
their offering right.
There are some particular valuation related issues that need further attention. Headway
values have typically not distinguished properly between the dominance of wait time at highfrequencies and the dominance of displacement time at low frequencies. Late time values
either explicitly relate to destination arrivals or else there is a degree of indeterminacy as towhat they represent. The latter ambiguity does need to be removed in future work but in any
event there is a need to distinguish between and value of late arrivals at the destination andthe value of late arrivals at the departure point. Crowding values need to be grounded in
occupancy rates up to 100% load factor and then passengers per square metre beyond thatwhilst displacement time multipliers must distinguish direction of travel and time of day.
New research could usefully examine convenience aspects such as integration between
modes, the acquisition of tickets and obtaining relevant information, and Lee (2013)
demonstrates such issues to be able to influence public transport demand favourably. We
have not covered these latter aspects of convenience here but our impression is that theevidence base is not large.
To these ‘lists’ we can add that there may be temporal variations in multipliers whilst
concerns will remain regarding cultural transferability and there are clearly differences
between ‘users’ and ‘non-users’ about which we do not know as much as we should.
Changing expectations over time and an ageing population could lead to different multipliers
over time whilst multipliers might be tempered by conditions, so for example, commuters inTokyo might have somewhat greater tolerance to crowding than commuters in many othermetro systems.
Conditional upon more widespread adoption of formal procedures to evaluate
convenience improvements, and we have argued that the treatment of convenience really
does matter, our review of evidence and in any event general impressions and expectations
would suggest that it make sense to derive local values where possible. Of course, these canbe benchmarked against broader review based material.
SP methods are traditionally used in a very detailed manner, to derive parameters that
can then be used to populate a ‘bottom-up’ cost-benefit appraisal. A novel alternative, which
could be regarded as ‘top-down’, would be to use SP in a more strategic fashion, as a
sophisticated voting system, to determine the sort of public transport system and policies
that people really want.
In addition to addressing research themes, there is also a need to embrace and exploit
new and emerging sources of data and information that reveal people’s choices, preferences,implied valuations and indeed deterrents. For example, mobile phone data for the Paris
underground has recently been exploited to provide reliable insights into passenger
behaviour (Aguiléra et al., 2013). The Roundtable identified promising new behavioural data
sources as:60check-in and check-out data can provide considerable insights into urban travel
patterns and choices;

Summary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 2014

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT



mobile phone data contains a wealth of information from ultimate origin anddestination details12, through route choices down to even which carriages areboarded;

CCTV data informs on train arrival and departure times, on escalator-stairs choice,on platform crowding, choice of seat and whether to stand and a range of otherbehavioural issues;

mobile phone apps can be used to contact travellers during the course of theirjourneys regarding their ongoing experiences and also to undertake post-journeymarket research

These data could be particularly useful for the access and egress components of
convenience, where operators have little control, and for inter-modal integration.
Finally, our view is that there are significant economies in pooling research efforts. In
Britain, the 24 train operating companies and other organisations with railway responsibilities
have voluntarily formed a ‘research club’ to pursue common research interests which isfunded through subscription. At the other extreme, there is ‘pan-country’ funding ofresearch, such as by the European Commission. We feel that opportunities are being missed
for conducting more meaningful, significant and path-breaking research by transport
operators and regional authorities through collaborative, well-focussed research to address
the sort of common challenges that this document is concerned with. Opportunities to shareknowledge, expertise and research findings should be fully exploited.
The view of the roundtable was that this is an area of considerable interest to many
researchers and practitioners, so we can expect a considerable amount of further research(both published and unpublished) on this subject going forward. It would therefore be useful
if some organisation established a central repository for travel time valuation (and alsoelasticity research), organised and categorised by subject area, similar to but expanded on
the Bureau of Transport Economics Transport Elasticities Database Online(www.bitre.gov.au/tedb), perhaps along the lines of the resource provided by the Victoria
Transport Planning Institute (eg, www.vtpi.org/elasticities.pdf) or indeed the UK railway’s
Passenger Demand Forecasting Handbook (PDFH) but with access to source material. This
would require ongoing funding, and ideally would be housed and supported in agovernmental agency much along the lines of maintaining physical libraries.
The PDFH provides a good example of how different parties, such as operators,
government, infrastructure providers and other bodies, can work together to develop andagree a common, and evolving, evidence base in these issues, considering all the attributes
together rather than each in isolation. It would make sense to take forward such an initiativeon a much wider basis than just the UK, and indeed extended to cover not just theconvenience issues here discussed but also cost, comfort and time.
There are also three highly complementary research themes that should be pursued,each of which could itself be the subject of a Roundtable. These are:

12.

The marketing of public transport convenience, and in particular what are theperceptions of the current situation and of changes and how can these be improved
and what promotional measures can be taken to increase public transport use?
This is important given that the public transport operator provides only a proportion of thejourney product and particularly because access and egress are important aspects of
convenience.

Summary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 2014

61

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORTWhat is the most appropriate means of forecasting how changes in convenience
impact on public transport demand?

Measuring changes in convenience and monitoring their effects.

The former two issues are somewhat outside the remit of this study. The latter we coveramongst other issues in the next section.
5.2

Monitoring, Validating and Ex-Post Analysis

Whilst we have pointed out there is now a significant evidence base relating toconvenience multipliers, there is also a need to appraise the methodologies used to obtained
the valuation evidence and the findings themselves.
The Roundtable was of the view that a ‘research protocol’ needs to be established formonitoring and ex-post analysis of improvements to convenience. In this regard, Litman(2014) makes the following important points:
“Survey transit operators who have implemented various service quality
improvements, such as reduced crowding and real-time information signs, to better
understand their experience. In particular this research should attempt to identify:
The impacts of these improvements on patron satisfaction and transit ridership.
How individual improvements are coordinated to maximize their effectiveness.
How to avoid potential pitfalls.”

Learning from the experiences of operators is often a neglected aspect of monitoring. In
addition though there is a need for the more conventional form of behavioural monitoring.
Litman (2014) adds:
“Perform detailed before-and-after studies of any transit service improvements. For
example, before implementing service improvements collect appropriate baseline data
through surveys and traffic counts as a basis for evaluating how they affect patron
satisfaction, travel and operations”

We might usefully add to this that operators can monitor changes in demand as
represented in their sales of tickets and surveys must be conducted post-improvement to
identify the reasons for behavioural change.
There is another, but indeed related, issue of validation that also needs to be addressed.
This relates to the use of hypothetical questions to derive values and drive policy. The SP
method has, for around 30 years, been a key part of the tool-kit available to transport
planners and analysts. It has provided an enormous amount of evidence worldwide on
parameters used in transport forecasting and appraisal, as is clear from our review. Despite
this, there still remains an underlying unease about the SP approach, and not just amongst
economists who traditionally favour methods based around individuals’ actual behaviour.
Indeed, we have reported what we regard to be convincing evidence that SP based multipliervalues for walk and wait time seem to be too low. This appears to be on the grounds ofrealism rather than protest response. We are also aware that SP methods can provide what
can be regarded to be inflated values for contentious issues such as late time and crowding,as well as comfort related factors, where exaggerated responses might influence policy.

62

Summary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 2014

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

We would therefore recommend, wherever possible, that SP values are given a firmbasis in RP behaviour and that convincing evidence is provided that SP evidence is reliable.
Of course, poor RP data and models serve no useful purpose in validating SP methods. But it
is not beyond the bounds of reasonableness and ingenuity to identify RP choice contexts
where we can obtain large samples of travellers with real and familiar trade-off choices
between convenience attributes. Although there are those who are sceptical about building
reliable RP models, we note the plausible and generally robust Raveau et al. (2013) RP
results discussed at the Roundtable even without the benefit of very large sample sizes.
Moreover, the resource paper by Kato (2014) reveals the emphasis on robust RP data inJapanese studies, often based around the choices presented amongst rival train companies
and routes, although the unexploited potential of SP methods in that country is also pointed
out. Concerted efforts to build robust RP models will, in our view, yield reliable parametersthat can be used to evaluate comparable SP evidence.

6. POLICY IMPLICATIONS

The view of the Roundtable was that convenience is not generally covered as well as itshould be in policy and project assessment, either because of the absence of official
economic appraisal procedures or else because of limitations in coverage of existing appraisal
methods. This is disappointing given the importance of convenience terms in the overall
attractiveness of public transport.
Current transport evaluation methods tend to focus on speed and price and undervalue
comfort, convenience and reliability. This skews planning and investment decisions. Somecost-effective transit improvement strategies are overlooked and undervalued, resulting inunderinvestment in transit service quality makes transit less attractive relative to automobile
travel. Opportunities for modal integration are overlooked, since many transit quality
improvements involve improving walking and cycling conditions, or improving connections
with other modes. This reduces the attractiveness of public transport in relation to use of theprivate car contributing to a cycle of increased automobile dependency and sprawl andreduced transit ridership and revenue.
The review findings should be a valuable resource to planners and policy makers,
operators and funding bodies, facilitating access to a significant body of empirical evidenceon travel quality attributes often overlooked. The findings also yield insights into
methodological issues and provide a means by which the results of specific empirical studies
can be interpreted in relation to a large amount of accumulated evidence.
By providing evidence on convenience multipliers and demonstrating the importance of
convenience, this report aims to support the identification and evaluation of schemes that
improve convenience to achieve broader transport policy and mobility objectives.
We have seen that factors related to convenience can form a significant proportion of thegeneralised cost of public transport. Addressing convenience is therefore an important part of
improving wellbeing of public transport users, and attracting non-users to use public
transport, and more generally a significant route to increasing welfare by reducing the costsof transport.

Summary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 201463

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Litman (2008), reports that inconvenience and discomfort often double or triple average
travel time costs. This underlines the need to take convenience seriously in project appraisaland planning and for planners and policy makers, operators and funding bodies to identify
means of improving convenience.
The previous section sets out suggestions for further research into convenience
multipliers. However, there is little point in authorities, planners and operators conducting
further empirical research if there is no appraisal system in place to make use of the values.
Existing appraisal methods should be extended where necessary to appraise the full setof convenience measures. Incorporating convenience can clearly alter the outcome of costbenefit assessments of projects and policies. For example, the Paris experience (Kroes et al.,2013) demonstrates that counting the benefits of reducing crowding added around 6% to thetotal benefits of the investment to extend RER line E13.
Policy makers must also recognise that there is more to improving convenience thanschemes to reduce walking times, reduce headways or improve crowding levels. A costeffective way forward might in some circumstances be to achieve an effective convenience
improvement by reducing the penalty attached to the variables walk time and crowding. Thus
reductions in generalised cost might be achieved more cost effectively by designing public
transport interiors to facilitate standing safely and comfortably rather than by generally
expensive increases in capacity. Similarly, improving facilities at bus stops, stations and attransfer points can reduce the cost attached to wait time and hence again effectively serve asa reduced waiting time.
Apart from the valuations themselves, there are issues of measurement andimplementation. Quality measured is not always quality delivered nor quality perceived.
There are significant challenges in measuring reliability and crowding, although possibilities
are improving here with technology, noting that these vary across, for example, different
departures and indeed within any given departure through the course of a journey. Different
market segments will have different convenience multipliers, and the ability to more closely
tailor provision with what people want and are willing to pay for requires more information
than is currently available. Implementing improvements in the appraisal of convenience willplace significant demands on measurement abilities. Measurement and valuation of
convenience is important not just for the appraisal of schemes but also management andregulation and improvement of operations. Indeed, measurement of convenience is a prerequisite to its good management, regulation and delivery.
The sorts of interventions that the valuations reported here could be used to evaluate
investment, planning, pricing and policy options that cover:





13.

64

Measures such as longer and higher capacity trains, improved service frequencies andappropriate pricing incentives that reduce the degree of crowding, particularly on peak
services;
Providing more through services and where possible improving conditions and timetransferring at interchange locations;Improving access to and from public transport and integration between modes;
Pricing measures to encourage travellers to change their time of travel to off-peakperiods;
This scheme also involves some direct travel time benefits because of a shorter route forsome travellers. In other schemes without travel time benefits, the importance ofincorporating the crowding benefits might be much higher.

Summary and conclusions — Discussion Paper 2014-02 © OECD/ITF 2014

VALUING CONVENIENCE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORTOperational and infrastructure measures to improve on-time performance and toprovide reliable information to travellers on how trains and buses are running;
Higher service frequencies, in terms of the impact of waiting time as well as theconvenience effect;
Providing better passenger information, both on-vehicle and at-stations/stops, on awide range of issues such as service performance, next departure, disruptions,directions and obtaining assistance.

7. CONCLUDING REMARKSThe outcome of this roundtable has been, we would argue, the most extensive review so
far conducted of valuations of public transport convenience, covering appraisal practice, thenow extensive empirical evidence base and identifying policy implications and future researchneeds and directions. Valuations of in-vehicle time have dominated transport appraisal and areview of evidence on attributes that influence public transport convenience is timely, notleast given the serious transport-related challenges that increased investment in and better
planning of public transport is well suited to address.
Our hope is that this document will facilitate greater use of convenience valuations in theappraisal of transport investments and policies worldwide. There is no reason why, inprinciple, the ‘best practice’ adopted in some countries and by certain organisations cannot
be adopted more widely. Whilst the valuations summarised here provide a valuable resource,
ideally appraisal should be informed by local parameters and we would encourage theirestimation as well as a greater level of detail as to how and to what extent the convenience
multipliers vary across different circumstances.
And finally, we recognise that there are a wide range of comfort related variables which
are also of importance in public transport provision and increasing its attractiveness. A
similar assessment of their valuations is also long overdue.

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65

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