Decomposing mode-specific values of travel time savings with respect to different levels of travel-based multitasking: A revealed preference study

There is ample evidence that the VTTS of public transport (PT) users is lower than that of car drivers and dropped further in recent years. One reason could be the better conditions for multitasking in PT, which improve continuously with the availability of mobile information and communication technologies. While this was addressed in several stated preference studies, revealed preference studies are scarce. None of them estimated the effect of multitasking on the VTTS and how this effect depends on activity types and travel modes. We estimate the effect of multitasking on the VTTS of PT users and car drivers using revealed preference data from a weeklong mobility and activity survey in Austria. Multitasking activities were allocated to two levels depending on whether they can be performed while driving (level 1) or not (level 2). In our two-stage modelling approach, stage 1 predicts the multitasking behaviour in non-chosen modes, while stage 2 uses these predictions to estimate the effect of multitasking on the VTTS using a mode choice model as utility framework. We find that the VTTS of PT users is lower than that of car drivers even without multitasking (5.50 vs. 14.32 euro/h) and further drops with different levels of multitasking (3.95 and 3.35 euro/h for levels 1 and 2), whereas the VTTS of car drivers drops only insignificantly to 14.05 euro/h with level 1multitasking. The results emphasise the importance of good multitasking conditions alongside fast connections for the choice of PT.