Valuation of travel time savings for intercity travel: The Madrid-Barcelona corridor

We derive values of travel time savings (VOT) for the Madrid–Barcelona corridor, linking the two largest cities in Spain, based on the estimation of discrete choice models among the main public transport services in the corridor: air transport, high speed rail (HSR) and bus. The new HSR alternative (which started to operate in February 2008) competes directly with one of the densest airline domestic markets in the world, and its introduction produced substantial improvements in level of service, achieving reductions in travel time of more than 50% over the conventional train.