ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the manner in which people schedule their time spent in activities and how travel behaviorists describe time spent in transportation. It discusses characteristics of time spent in travel versus time spent in activities. Almost all travel models aim to predict variations in travel distance or time as a function of socio-demographic conditions, occupations, residential location or even the type of car a subject drives. Cumulative travel statistics are gleaned by summing trip information to acquire total travel time or total travel distance. An analytical technique for taming the complexity of travel involves organizing travel into multi-stop trips, commonly known as tours or trip chains. The prevailing thought in the transportation industry is that time in travel has a negative utility. Passenger travel in metropolitan areas is affected by a variety of factors—a mixture of demographics, habits, culture, and preferences, with a sprinkle of geography—but mostly a healthy portion of magical dust.
