The use of recovery time in timetables: rail passengers’ preferences and valuation relative to travel time and delays

Recovery time in the rail industry is the additional time that is included in train timetables over and above the minimum journey time necessary often with the explicit aim of improving punctuality. Recovery time is widely used in railways in a number of countries but prior to this study there has been no investigation of the rail users’ point of view. Perceived recovery time, such as being held outside stations and prolonged stops at stations, might have some premium valuation due to the frustration caused. If perceived recovery time in train timetables does carry a premium, then the benefits of improved punctuality achieved by it will be reduced. This paper is the first to investigate passengers’ views and preferences on the use of recovery time. We summarise the findings of a large study and provide estimates of passengers’ valuations of recovery time, both relative to in-vehicle time and late time, that can be used for economic appraisal purposes. Overall, we find most passengers support the use of recovery time but the context is important. Only 13% of users disapprove of its use as a tool to reduce lateness. The estimated premia vary by demand characteristics and are significant in some contexts, although on average are of a small magnitude. The applicability of the estimates is demonstrated through the appraisal of an actual scheme in the UK. We observe that the introduction of more recovery time along with the subsequent improvement in reliability can lead to significant reductions in generalised journey time, even when recovery time carries a valuation premium. We must however strike a word of caution since we note that there were higher than expected proportions of non-traders in the survey which may have affected the results; future studies into the topic should look to minimise the proportion of non-traders. This study provides valuable and necessary first steps in this challenging topic.