The Traveler Costs of Unplanned Transport Network Disruptions: An Activity-Based Modeling Approach

Abstract:     
In this paper we introduce an activity-based modeling approach for evaluating the traveler costs of transport network disruptions. The model handles several important aspects of such events: increases in travel time may be very long in relation to the normal day-to-day fluctuations; the impact of delay may depend on the flexibility to reschedule activities; lack of information and uncertainty about travel conditions may lead to under- or over-adjustment of the daily schedule in response to the delay; delays on more than one trip may restrict the gain from rescheduling activities. We derive properties such as the value of time and schedule costs analytically. Numerical calculations show that the average cost per hour delay increases with the delay duration, so that every additional minute of delay comes with a higher cost. The cost varies depending on adjustment behavior (less adjustment, loosely speaking, giving higher cost) and scheduling flexibility (greater flexibility giving lower cost). The results indicate that existing evaluations of real network disruptions have underestimated the societal costs of the events.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 34

Keywords: transport network disruption, delay cost, schedule adjustment

JEL Classification: R40, R41

working papers series