By: Nighat Irum
Time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present,into the future. Time has long been an important subject of study in religion, philosophy and science, but defining it in a manner applicable to all fields without circularity has consistently eluded scholars. Never the less diverse fields such as business industry,sports,the sciences, and the performing arts all incorporate some notion of time into their respective measuring systems.In transport economics,the value of time is the opportunity cost of the time that a traveller would be willing to pay in order to save time, or the amount they would accept as compensation for lost time. One of the main justifications for transport improvements is the amount of time that travellers will save.
Using a set of values of time,the economic benefits of a transport project can be quantified in order to compare them to the costs( thus forming the basis of cost-benefit analysis). In particular, savings (or, for that matter, increases) in travel time form part of the change in consumer surplus for a transport project. Values of time are used to calculate the non-monetary costs incurred as part of a journey,(a combination of both monetary and non-monetary costs) can be calculated. The value of time varies considerably from person to person and depends upon the purpose of the journey, but it can generally be divided into two sets of valuations: working time and non-working time. This division is appropriate because the value of working time (i-e time spent travelling in the course of work) is calculated differently from the value of non-working time ( i-e. time spent travelling outside work). For example, if a worker on a salary of rupees 200 per hour travels to a meeting, the value of time in that case is 200 per hour because that is the amount the employer would be willing to pay to reduce travel time(as travel time can be considered to be “wasted”, i-e. not spent working).
In practice, time spent travelling on certain modes (especially train, but also bus and car passengers) can sometimes be used to carry out some work, while time spent using certain other modes (especially car drivers, cyclist and walkers) cannot be used to carry out work. This means the value of travel time (and thus the value of travel time reductions) for modes where the employee could carry on doing some work is lower for employees already, using any such mode. Conversely the value of travel time reductions for such modes for employees currently using a mode that does not allow carry out work (and who would switch mode) is larger. The UK department for transport calculates average values of time for travel on various modes of transport so that these values can be used to appraise transport projects as part of its new approach to appraisal. This is time spent outside our work. Which might include journeys to and from work and leisure journeys.
Since this time is not valued in a market, it can only be estimated from revealed preference or stated preference analysis techniques, where the real or hypothetical choices of travellers between faster, more expensive modes and slower, cheaper modes can be examined. For example, if a Traveller has a choice between a coach which takes 6 hours and cost rupees 100, or a train which takes four hours and cost rupees 300, we can deduce that if the travel traveller chooses the train, their value of time is rupees 100 per hour or more (because they are willing to spend at least 200 to save two hours travel time). The difficulty in narrowing down the actual value of time from a pair of choices means that hypothetical situations are generally used (the stated preference technique)to deduce values of time.
The value of non working time is linked strongly to utility theory. The value of time cannot be assumed constant over time. Time is a limited good and as productivity and income increase, the relative value of time increases as well. Historically, the projection of the value of time has been closely linked to personal income growth, which in practical applications is typically approximated by GDP growth. Due to a substantial amount of uncertainty in predicting the relationship between income and the value of time, it is common to apply relatively simple “rule-of-thumb” estimates that are measured as elasticity to income.
Generally, it is not clear what the elasticity should be, and from a theoretical stand point there is no reason why the income elasticity for private travel should be unity, since it is a matter of personal preference how individuals or households allocate additional income to purchasing time savings. There can be many reasons why the average value of time for the the population could increase or decrease over time. The use of time is an important issue in understanding human behaviour. Education, and travel behaviour although time is regarded as an abstract concept, there is increasing evidence that time is conceptualized in the mind in terms of space. That is, instead of thinking about time in a general, abstract way, humans think about time in a spatial way and mentally organise it. As such.Using space to think about time allows humans to mentally organize temporal events in a specific way.
The writer is Staff Reporter at Daily Country News.
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