The impact of tilting trains in Switzerland: A route choice model of regional- and long distance public transport trips
Year: 2002
Type: report
Abstract: In this paper, the relative importance of attributes for regional and long distance public transport (railway) is studied by analysing stated preference database using a multinomial logit model. The SP survey was built on the base of an existing RP survey (regional and long distance traffic). The significance of different attributes, such as in-vehicle time, number of transfer, transfer time, headway, price and comfort are established. This paper also shows how travellers value these specific attributes in dependence of the trip purpose and sociodemographic characteristics. Finally, several models in dependent of car ownership, trip purpose, ticket structure, etc. were estimated. The most important supply attributes for the route choice model in the regional and long distance railway traffic are the travel time (17 CHF/h) and the number of transfers. The comfort improvement inherent in the tilting train and other modern rolling stock is valued about 4 CHF/trip (for an average travel time of 1.5 h). The transfer, as such, is penalised with 19 minutes in-vehicle time, when the transfer time is included as a separate variable. This transfer time is va lued with 8.4 CHF/h. The price parameter of the commuters is significantly higher than that of other travellers, which implies their lower willingness-to-pay for improvements. For GA-holders (annual seasonal ticket), transfer time and service have a higher importance than for other groups. The estimates presented here confirm the sensitivity of the model parameters to the specification of the utility function, in particular the need to separate transfer and transfer time, headway and reliability, respectively. The valuations for comfort are in line with those reported by Wardman (2001a): equivalent to about 15 min travel time improvement for the better types of train sets; the further improvement implicit in the built quality of the tilting trains is low, but the travels appreciate the speed gain associated with them.
Authors: Vrtic, Milenko, Axhausen, Kay W.
Institution: ETH Zurich
Language: English
Subfield: Transportation
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2282401616