The Importance of Being Early

International Transport Economics Conference, June 2009, Minneapolis. Presented at International Association of Travel Behavior Research, December 2009

21 Pages Posted: 5 Jan 2011 Last revised: 22 Jan 2011

See all articles by Pavithra Parthasarathi

Pavithra Parthasarathi

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

Anupam Srivastava

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

Nikolas Geroliminis

EPFL

David Matthew Levinson

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Date Written: May 29, 2009

Abstract

The assumption that the penalty for being early is less than that for being late was put forward by Vickrey (1963) who analyzed how commuters compare penalties in the form of schedule delay (due to peak hour congestion), against penalties in the form of reaching their destination (ahead or behind their desired time of arrival). This assumption has been tested by many researchers since then for various applications, especially in modeling congestion pricing (Arnott et al., 1990) where it is critical to understand the tradeoff between schedule delay and travel delay. Key findings are summarized in the second section of this paper. This research aims to test this hypothesis of earliness being less expensive than lateness using empirical data at different levels and across different regions. New methods to estimate the ratio of earliness to lateness for different types of datasets are developed, which could be used by agencies to implement control policies like congestion pricing or other schemes more accurately. Travel survey data from metropolitan areas provide individual travel patterns while loop detector data provide link level traffic flow data.

The remainder of the paper is or oanized as follows: following a brief literature review, the next section provides a description of the theoretical model utilized in this paper. The next two sections describe the methodologies used to test the earliness over lateness hypothesis from travel survey data and loop detector data. The final section of the paper will provide a discussion of the findings and implications of the study.

Keywords: congestion, time, earliness, lateness, travel

JEL Classification: R40, R41

Suggested Citation

Parthasarathi, Pavithra and Srivastava, Anupam and Geroliminis, Nikolas and Levinson, David Matthew, The Importance of Being Early (May 29, 2009). International Transport Economics Conference, June 2009, Minneapolis. Presented at International Association of Travel Behavior Research, December 2009, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1734931

Pavithra Parthasarathi

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities ( email )

420 Delaware St. SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
United States

Anupam Srivastava

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities ( email )

420 Delaware St. SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
United States

Nikolas Geroliminis

EPFL ( email )

Station 5
Odyssea 1.04
1015 Lausanne, CH-1015
Switzerland

HOME PAGE: http://luts.epfl.ch

David Matthew Levinson (Contact Author)

affiliation not provided to SSRN

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