Understanding worthwhile travel time: an empirical study of travel experiences across transport modes

The concept of worthwhile travel time (WTT, Cornet et al., 2022) provides insight into how travellers perceive their travel time. Worthwhileness can be linked to multiple domains, including enjoyment, fitness, and productivity. This study leverages the full open dataset collected by the Woorti app, comprising 38,838 validated trip legs in 8 countries, to empirically substantiate the WTT concept across walking, cycling, public transport, and private motorised travel. Using a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach, we analyse the intertwined relationships among traveller and trip characteristics, experience factors, and travel activities that influence perceived WTT. Our findings reveal that perceived WTT for walking and cycling is higher than for public or private motorised travel. For active modes like walking and cycling, enjoyment impacts perceived WTT more than fitness. Enjoyment is enabled by accompanying someone and listening to audio for walkers, and by thinking and the act of cycling itself for cyclists. For public transport travellers, perceived WTT is determined by personal productivity (browsing the internet, thinking, talking), followed by enjoyment (listening to audio, relaxing, watching/gaming). For private motorised travellers, perceived WTT is determined almost equally by personal productivity (thinking, driving itself) and enjoyment (accompanying someone, talking). Our empirical evidence emphasises the importance of policies that enhance the quality of travel time, such as safe and pleasant infrastructure for walking and cycling, uninterrupted internet access in public transport, and accommodating seating. The paper argues for a more explicit investigation of the factors that make travel time worthwhile, to enable policy makers to better include the enrichment of the travel experience in their decisions.