Revealed and stated preferences for reliable commuter rail in Norway

ABSTRACT

We study the effect of travel time reliability on passenger demand using a rich data set on period tickets and train delays over time for commuter trips in the Oslo capital region in Norway. We estimate the relationship between delays and demand using origin-destination fixed effects, which controls for any unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity across stations. The results show a negative effect of delays on demand, but smaller than the effect implied by stated preferences. As a possible explanation for this, we consider a reverse causal relationship, where high demand causes passenger crowding which again results in more delays. Splitting the sample into trips that start at crowded stations within the city-zone and trips that do not, we find evidence indicating that crowding is biasing the estimates towards zero.

KEYWORDS:

• Value of reliability
• elasticity of demand
• railway
• stated preference
• revealed preference

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Nils Fearnley, Kjell Werner Johansen, Tørris Rasmussen, Andreas Vigren and participants at the 1st Nordic Meeting in Transport Economics for comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. We are also grateful to NSB and The Norwegian National Rail Administration for sharing their data on monthly tickets and train reliability and to Andreas D. Landmark (SINTEF) for assistance in extracting the data. This paper is based on the project PRESIS, which is a cooperation between NNRA, CargoNet, NSB, Flytoget, SINTEF, TØI and NTNU. PRESIS has received support from the Norwegian Research Council, project code 227123.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We do not use data on trips starting and ending within the Oslo metropolitan area because they are covered by a zonal ticketing system which does not allow us to measure ticket volumes at a specific station.

2. Trains going outward are less crowded than trains going inward, but most trains go through the metropolitan area, with passengers boarding and getting off the train at different stations. Many of the outward commuters will, therefore, be boarding a crowded train, which gets less crowded as it leaves the metropolitan area.

3. This term is also used in some studies to describe the relative valuation of a reduction in the standard deviation of travel time and a reduction in travel time.

4. $0.04\cdot (ln\left(3\right)-ln\left(2\right))=0.04\cdot 0.41=0.016$.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Norges Forskningsråd [227123].