Effects of free travel programme on commuter behaviour : evidence from individual office access records

Abstract

The Travel Smart Pilot Programme was implemented to reduce morning peak hour congestion by providing free fares to early commuters, giving them the incentive of fare savings when one commutes during off-peak hours. It aims to redistribute peak demand over a wider time period. This paper analyses the effect of this programme on individual travel behaviour. The dataset used consists of electronic records of a building that tracks 1726 workers’ individual behaviour over time. It is found that the overall shift to earlier travel in response to the programme is very small. However, this average response masks considerable heterogeneous effect exhibited by individuals. Thus, we need to characterize individual response with respect to their opportunity cost of time involved when they take advantage of free fares. We found that individuals who require a time shift of more than 45 minutes are less elastic in their response. This elasticity falls rapidly to 0 when the time shift required increases. Therefore this paper provides one of the first empirical analyses on the willingness to change travel behaviour in response to the implementation of free travel programme.