Waiting for the Bus

In a natural experiment, college students riding public transit to UCLA were presented with the opportunity to pay for time savings. They could pay 75c to travel right away, or wait an average of 5.3 minutes for a free ride. 86% of riders chose to wait rather that pay. Their behavior suggests that the disutility of time spent waiting for a free ride is less than $8.50 per hour. Riders overestimated their wait time by a factor of two when it was imposed by the transit system, but accurately estimated their wait time when they chose to wait for the free bus ride.

[1]  John R. Schroeter,et al.  The Values of Waiting Time, Travel Time, and a Seat on a Bus , 1987 .

[2]  Avishai Ceder,et al.  PASSENGER WAITING TIME AT TRANSIT STOPS , 1985 .

[3]  S. K. Jason Chang,et al.  Modeling Passenger Waiting Time for Intermodal Transit Stations , 2001 .

[4]  Reuben Gronau.  Front matter, The Value of Time in Passenger Transportation: The Demand for Air Travel , 1970 .

[5]  W. Lam,et al.  BUS PASSENGER WALKING DISTANCES AND WAITING TIMES: A SUMMER-WINTER COMPARISON , 1981 .

[6]  Per Capita,et al.  About the authors , 1995, Machine Vision and Applications.

[7]  D. Quarmby.  CHOICE OF TRAVEL MODE FOR THE JOURNEY TO WORK-SOME FINDINGS , 1967 .

[8]  David A. Hensher,et al.  Measurement of the Valuation of Travel Time Savings , 2000 .

[9]  Jeffrey Brown,et al.  Fare-Free Public Transit at Universities , 2003 .

[10]  Thomas E Lisco.  VALUE OF COMMUTERS TRAVEL TIME - A STUDY IN URBAN TRANSPORTATION , 1968 .

[11]  H. Mohring.  Optimization and Scale Economies in Urban Bus Transportation , 1972 .

[12]  Antti Talvitie,et al.  COMPARISON OF PROBABILISTIC MODAL-CHOICE MODELS: ESTIMATION METHODS AND SYSTEM INPUTS , 1972 .

[13]  Jon Sonstelie,et al.  Rationing by Waiting and the Value of Time: Results from a Natural Experiment , 1985, Journal of Political Economy.

[14]  Jeffrey Brown,et al.  BruinGo: An Evaluation , 2003 .

[15]  Randy B Machemehl,et al.  Characterizing bus transit passenger waiting times , 2002 .

[16]  M. Beesley.  The Value of Time Spent in Travelling: Some New Evidence , 1965 .

[17]  J. Markham,et al.  The journey to work: A behavioural analysis , 1975 .

[18]  D. B. Hess,et al.  Unlimited Access , 2001 .

[19]  A Moreau,et al.  PUBLIC TRANSPORT WAITING TIMES AS EXPERIENCED BY CUSTOMERS , 1992 .

[20]  H. Champion,et al.  Economic considerations. , 1993, Critical care clinics.

[21]  C. Winston,et al.  The value of automobile travel time: implications for congestion policy , 1998 .

[22]  M. Wardman.  THE VALUE OF TRAVEL TIME. A REVIEW OF BRITISH EVIDENCE , 1998 .

[23]  Orlando Strambi,et al.  URBAN TRANSPORTATION ECONOMICS , 1994 .