ABSTRACT

Time and travel are usually expressed with a spatial dimension, and the relationship of the three elements is critical to the narrative. Time was inescapable. Trains demand temporal ordering primarily for operational safety. However, the railway and the railway timetable changed society. Rail travel in Britain in the late 1990s was central to the New Labour political discourse of ‘integration’, as it was recognised that more road building was unlikely to meet travel demand, and there was an opportunity for a ‘rail renaissance’. The social context of travel time connected back to those debates of time explored early on at Lancaster with John. Time is given an economic value that forms the basis of valuing travel time savings within the cost-benefit calculations of public policy. International business travel is male-dominated; far fewer women with caring commitments choose to travel with work.