Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MoTiV (Mobility and Time Value)

Teaser

Mobility and travel time account for a significant portion of everyone’s life. Despite this significance, we do not know much about what the Value of Travel Time (VTT) means for travellers. Depending on a large number of factors, travel time can be used more efficiently or...

Summary

Mobility and travel time account for a significant portion of everyone’s life. Despite this significance, we do not know much about what the Value of Travel Time (VTT) means for travellers. Depending on a large number of factors, travel time can be used more efficiently or just experienced differently by different people. MoTiV aims at reducing this knowledge gap by addressing emerging views and perspectives on VTT and adopting travellers’ viewpoint. In this respect, it does not only focus on the economic value of travel time savings, which is central to VTT studies carried out since the 1960s to support transport appraisals. Rather, it adopts a broader conceptual framework that attempts to quantify how endogenous and exogenous factors shape the individual travel experience for various trip purposes, thus contributing to the sense of “wasted” or “worthwhile” travel time.

Through a smartphone-based data collection, the project aims at collecting a sample from at least 5,000 participants from minimum 10 European countries. The dataset is expected to cover a wide range of mobility behaviours, across all transport modes, and to be balanced in terms of gender representation, as well as in geographical and generational coverage. Besides adding to the body of VTT research, the project results are expected to contribute to the development of mobility services, including digital applications, supporting travellers to make better use of their travel time. Furthermore, the project results will provide visibility into the factors that contribute to a worthwhile experience in travel on different transport modes (public, active/semi-active or private motorised), therefore providing valuable data and evidence for investing in higher quality of transport as an alternative to investing in speedier transport.

Work performed

The first 18 months of the MoTiV activities largely focused on establishing the internal conditions for the achievement of the main results of the project during the second period. Consequently, the conceptual, organisational and technological pillars of the project were
defined.

The MoTiV conceptual framework, illustrated in the “Mobility and Travel Time Report”, contains a comprehensive review of emerging VTT conceptualisations, models and results. Common to these approaches is the idea that investments and policies in transport infrastructure and services should support a large variety of requirements and objectives, not only of an economic nature. These requirements include, among others, accessibility, equity, empowerment, participation, environmental friendliness, individual health and well-being. The MoTiV conceptual framework is grounded on the notion of Value Proposition of Mobility (VPM): this can be regarded as the value embedded in individual mobility choices. As such, the value proposition of mobility is focused on the individual traveller and his/her perceived travel experience. The VPM perspective is based on the idea that each transport mode, or combination of transport modes, provides a different value proposition to the traveller in a specific mobility situation. Time and cost savings represent only two of these factors, not necessarily the one contributing the most to VTT. The MoTiV conceptual framework illustrates how the notion of VPM in MoTiV is explored by combining several existing concepts and models on VTT. among them, the concept of Reasonable Travel Time (RTT) is adopted to develop a holistic approach to decompose the multiple dimensions of the VPM into a set of hypotheses to be verified through the MoTiV data collection.

At an organisational level, the MoTiV consortium discussed and agreed the general requirements, targets and modalities for the Data Collection Campaigns (DCC) to take place in the participating countries with the common goal of collecting at least 5,000 samples. To meet the ambition of the data collection, user engagement is a key requirement. Indeed, the collected data must be as reliable and accurate as possible but should be collected without creating excessive burden or ambiguity to the user. Due to the specific needs of the MoTiV DCC, the consortium developed its own smartphone app with a well-defined brand: “Make your journey worthwhile” is the slogan of the Woorti app, which will be available in iOS and Android app stores from 30 April 2019. The technological development of the Woorti app, designed around the complex requirements of the conceptual framework and taking into account the challenge of the European-wide campaign, represented a major effort of the project Consortium.

In addition to internal Consortium activities, the MoTiV project has been active in getting known and in disseminating its initial results, acting in synergy with related Horizon projects whenever possible. This was the case of the participation in the Civitas Forum 2018, in which MoTiV partnered with H2020 projects HiReach, Inclusion and Stars to deliver a session on how big data could overcome sustainable urban mobility policy challenges. MoTiV representatives have also been present at relevant conferences and events, such as the 4th Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility (CSUM 2018) and the ITS World Congress 2018, which this year was connected to the theme of “quality of life”. In connection to these participations, a total of 5 scientific publications were published and 2 others were submitted. The innovative approach proposed by the MoTiV project has attracted interest at international level. One of the major achievements of the first year of activities was the contribution to the high-level roundtable on value of travel time organised by the International Transport Forum (ITF) at the OECD in September 2018. According to Dr Giuseppe Lugano, MoTiV Project Manager, “the audi

Final results

During the second part of the project, through the collection and analysis of the MoTiV dataset, the MoTiV efforts and expected results will be directed to contribute to one of the central policy needs highlighted at the OECD ITF Round Table: to extend the range of options presented to transport policy makers, researchers need to provide evidence on how the value of time savings might be adjusted to reflect differences in the quality of a journey. Improving the quality of a journey can be as beneficial as investment to reduce journey times.

In conclusion, MoTiV has the potential to go beyond producing new monetary values of travel time within the frame of current CBA practice by challenging the common assumption that travel time is wasted, and therefore turning on its head the travel-time savings approach to transport appraisal. Future mobility systems should aim for zero wasted time in travel, rather than small reductions in travel time on inherently wasteful modes.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.motivproject.eu.