This is an interesting question, and one to which the answer is currently unclear. However it is more immediately obvious what 'inconvenience' might consist in. A journey is inconvenient, we suggest, to the extent that it involves the unanticipated or unwanted expenditure of physical effort, mental or cognitive effort, and emotional or affective effort. Physical effort when travelling is used for maintaining body posture in walking, waiting or carrying. Comfortable seats will reduce the amount of such effort expended, negotiating an awkward interchange while burdened with infants and baggage will increase it.
Cognitive effort is needed to collect and process information before and during a journey.
Route familiarity will reduce the amount of cognitive effort needed, while if the journey needs constant monitoring of progress and the seeking out or interpretation of information this will tend to increase it. Nervous energy is expended on worry about whether the journey will be successfully accomplished. Uncertainty about connection, arrival or personal vulnerability will tend to increase the amount of 'affective spend' on a journey. Bus travellers rated the extent to which the amounts of physical, mental and emotional effort required for their journey was more or less than they would like or 'About right'. Car commuters rated the amounts of physical, cognitive and affective effort expended on their current car commute on 7-point scales from 'A great deal' to 'None at all' and then whether these amounts were more or less than they would like, or just right.