Noriyuki SAKAI

Measurement of Benefits of Reducing Travel Time Focusing on Value of Travel Time in Winter

Kazushi SANO

In this research, as one of the studies to examine measures for traffic smoothness in winter, we analyzed influence of winter weather condition, especially snowfall, on value of travel time and calculated the benefits of reducing travel time. We tried to estimate passenger car, bus, and freight car by vehicle type. There are two ways to estimate value of travel time: income approach and preference approach. Income approach is usually used for cost-benefit analysis for road construction. However, we adopted preference approach since distress and physical fatigue due to traffic congestion during snowfall may have influence on value of travel time. Specifically, travel history data from ETC 2.0 probe information and route choice data from a questionnaire survey were used to estimate value of travel time. As a result, we found that value of travel time in winter season was significantly higher than that in non-winter season using either travel history data or route choice data. In addition, we confirmed that in winter value of travel time tended to be high even when there was no snowfall. There was a similar tendency for value of time reliability. From the results of the questionnaire on snowfall, it was thought that the slowdown caused by snowfall and the congestion caused by the snowfall caused the time restrictions on the destination to be stricter, and the willingness to pay during snowfall increased in order to meet the designated time. Based on the estimation results, we calculated the benefit of reducing travel time in the cost-benefit analysis, and found that the benefit of reducing travel time was large under all road conditions and roadside conditions. Therefore, it is important to consider the regional characteristics when measuring benefits.(283word)