Travellers’ Response to Time-Related Quality of Transportation Service

The purpose of travel is to arrive at the intended destination within the intended time. Accordingly, the traveler’s choice of transport mode or route depends on the time when one can arrive at one’s intended place by whichever means. When the traveling cost, comfort and other factors are not overriding, the traveler selects the mode or route that requires the shortest time to travel. The travel time is the time from the departure time from the traveler’s home to the arrival time at the final destination. It has more or less a probabilistic fluctuation in general. Therefore, the traveler behaves so that the probability of being late for the intended time will assume a sufficiently small value when one is appointed the time for arrival. In the following paper, the appointed time for arrival is expressed at A.T.A. When the traveler decides departure time to reduce the probability of being late, the time interval from the departure time to the A.T.A. is different from the travel time itself. This time interval is virtually spend for travel, so it is called virtual time-consumption. V.T.C, in the following. The difference between V.T.C. and the travel time is remarkable when the fluctuation of the travel time is large. It is clear that the shortest time means the shortest V.T.C. more precisely. So consideration on the human decision making process up to departure is the first step of this study. The time-related quality of the transportation service is considered as the joint evaluation of the swiftness and the reliability of the mode of travel. It is well represented by the traveler’s decision of the departure time and V.T.C. as described later in the paper. In the following, traveler’s decision making process in response to the probability fluctuations of travel time is dealt with in the manner of system identification.