Modeling activity duration and travel choice from a co m- mon microeconomic framework

Travel utility in discrete choice modeling is a (truncated) conditional indirect utility function (CIUF) whose specification can be derived from a consumer behavior framework that includes time assigned to activities besides good consumption, which means that the derivation of a CIUF requires the implicit existence of conditional demands for goods as well as for activity times. In this paper we apply this approach to a DeSerpa like framework, explicitly obtaining those demand models as well as the CIUF. Thus, information on time assigned to activities could be used to estimate conditional time assignment models that involve the same set of parameters as the mode choice model. The microeconomic specifications of the resulting activity duration models and the CIUF (which are far from being simple) are discussed, including the explicit calculation of all time values and extensions to consider other constrained activities.