VALUING LONG DISTANCE BUSINESS TRAVEL TIME SAVINGS FOR EVALUATION: A METHODOLOGICAL REVIEW AND APPLICATION --TRANSPORTATION PLANNING METHODS. PROCEEDINGS OF SEMINAR M HELD AT THE PTRC SUMMER ANNUAL MEETING, SUSSEX UNIVERSITY, ENGLAND, JULY 14-17, 1986. VOLUME P282

The value of time savings for business travellers forms a sizeable part of the benefits from trunk road, rail and air transport improvement schemes. It is therefore important to possess appropriate values to place on business travel time savings for evaluation purposes. The normal approach in practice is still to adopt the wage rate of the workers in question (with an increment for overheads and non-wage payments), despite the many criticisms of this approach. In this paper we review these criticisms and consider the implications they have for the development of alternative methodologies for valuing business travel time savings. Data from two surveys of long distance business travellers and one survey of employers, which we recently carried out as part of an SERC financed project on business travel, is used to estimate values of business travel time savings for each of these different methodologies. Unlike previous studies we make considerable use of data obtained from stated preference experiments. Our results show the normal approach to valuing business travel time savings is not appropriate, and that better approaches are possible.(a) for the covering abstract of the seminar see IRRD 812674.