IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/trapol/v25y2013icp210-221.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does flexitime affect choice of departure time for morning home-based commuting trips? Evidence from two regions in California

Author

Listed:
  • He, Sylvia Y.

Abstract

Over the past twenty-five years, more workers in the United States have been given the option of flexible work schedules, which are designed to redistribute commuter traffic over the course of a day by allowing employees to vary their arrival and/or departure times. This paper examines whether and to what degree access to flexible work schedules affects the departure times of commuters in the two largest and most congested areas of California: the Los Angeles and San Francisco regions. Trip data were obtained from the 2009 US National Household Travel Survey (NHTS). The results of this study show that people who have access to flexitime preferred later departure times rather than earlier times. Workers with flexible schedules were 3.30% less likely to depart before peak hours, 4.11% less likely during peak hours, and 7.41% more likely afterwards. Based on these findings, government agencies and private firms in regions with severe traffic congestion problems may consider adopting alternative work schedules.

Suggested Citation

  • He, Sylvia Y., 2013. "Does flexitime affect choice of departure time for morning home-based commuting trips? Evidence from two regions in California," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 210-221.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:25:y:2013:i:c:p:210-221
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tranpol.2012.11.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X12001679
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tranpol.2012.11.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arnott, R. & de Palma, A. & Lindsey, R., 1990. "Departure time and route choice for the morning commute," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 209-228, June.
    2. Andre de Palma & Moshe Ben-Akiva & Claude Lefevre & Nicolaos Litinas, 1983. "Stochastic Equilibrium Model of Peak Period Traffic Congestion," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(4), pages 430-453, November.
    3. Caplice, Chris & Mahmassani, Hani S., 1992. "Aspects of commuting behavior: Preferred arrival time, use of information and switching propensity," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 409-418, September.
    4. Saleh, Wafaa & Farrell, Séona, 2005. "Implications of congestion charging for departure time choice: Work and non-work schedule flexibility," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 39(7-9), pages 773-791.
    5. Small, Kenneth A, 1982. "The Scheduling of Consumer Activities: Work Trips," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(3), pages 467-479, June.
    6. Anthony J. Moore & Paul P. Jovanis & Frank S. Koppelman, 1984. "Modeling the Choice of Work Schedule with Flexible Work Hours," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(2), pages 141-164, May.
    7. Robert B. Noland & John W. Polak, 2002. "Travel time variability: A review of theoretical and empirical issues," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 39-54, January.
    8. Mahmassani, Hani S. & Chang, Gang-Len, 1986. "Experiments with departure time choice dynamics of urban commuters," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 297-320, August.
    9. Asensio, Javier & Matas, Anna, 2008. "Commuters' valuation of travel time variability," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 1074-1085, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Tianhao & Chen, Peng & Tian, Ye, 2021. "Personalized incentive-based peak avoidance and drivers’ travel time-savings," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 68-80.
    2. Li, Haiying & Li, Xian & Xu, Xinyue & Liu, Jun & Ran, Bin, 2018. "Modeling departure time choice of metro passengers with a smart corrected mixed logit model - A case study in Beijing," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 106-121.
    3. Shuai Yu & Bin Li & Dongmei Liu, 2023. "Exploring the Public Health of Travel Behaviors in High-Speed Railway Environment during the COVID-19 Pandemic from the Perspective of Trip Chain: A Case Study of Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Urban Agglomera," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(2), pages 1-22, January.
    4. Wöhner, Fabienne, 2022. "Work flexibly, travel less? The impact of telework and flextime on mobility behavior in Switzerland," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    5. Shen, Yue & Chai, Yanwei & Kwan, Mei-Po, 2015. "Space–time fixity and flexibility of daily activities and the built environment: A case study of different types of communities in Beijing suburbs," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 90-99.
    6. Marc-Edouard Schultheiss, 2022. "Assessment of the Bus Transit Network: A Perspective from the Daily Activity-Travel Organization of Travelers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-20, February.
    7. Crawford, Fiona, 2020. "Segmenting travellers based on day-to-day variability in work-related travel behaviour," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    8. Shin, Eun Jin, 2019. "Self-employment and travel behavior: A case study of workers in central Puget Sound," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 101-112.
    9. Haiyan Zhu & Hongzhi Guan & Yan Han & Wanying Li, 2020. "Can Road Toll Convince Car Travelers to Adjust Their Departure Times? Accounting for the Effect of Choice Behavior under Long and Short Holidays," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(24), pages 1-29, December.
    10. Ge, Jiaqi & Polhill, J. Gareth & Craig, Tony P., 2018. "Too much of a good thing? Using a spatial agent-based model to evaluate “unconventional” workplace sharing programmes," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 83-97.
    11. Yang Gao & David Levinson, 2024. "A bifurcation of the peak: new patterns of traffic peaking during the COVID-19 era," Transportation, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 329-349, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Soriguera, Francesc, 2014. "On the value of highway travel time information systems," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 294-310.
    2. Carrion, Carlos & Levinson, David, 2012. "Value of travel time reliability: A review of current evidence," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 720-741.
    3. Lim, Yongtaek & Heydecker, Benjamin, 2005. "Dynamic departure time and stochastic user equilibrium assignment," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 97-118, February.
    4. Hugo E. Silva & Robin Lindsey & André de Palma & Vincent A. C. van den Berg, 2017. "On the Existence and Uniqueness of Equilibrium in the Bottleneck Model with Atomic Users," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(3), pages 863-881, August.
    5. Khattak, Asad J. & De Palma, André, 1997. "The impact of adverse weather conditions on the propensity to change travel decisions: A survey of Brussels commuters," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 181-203, May.
    6. Richard Arnott, 1986. "Information and Time-Of-Use Decisions in Stochastically Congestable Facilities," Discussion Papers 788, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    7. Mickaël Beaud & Thierry Blayac & Maïté Stéphan, 2014. "Measurements and properties of the values of time and reliability," Working Papers 14-06, LAMETA, Universtiy of Montpellier, revised Jul 2014.
    8. Beaud, Mickael & Blayac, Thierry & Stéphan, Maïté, 2016. "The impact of travel time variability and travelers’ risk attitudes on the values of time and reliability," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 93(PA), pages 207-224.
    9. Zhaoqi Zang & Xiangdong Xu & Kai Qu & Ruiya Chen & Anthony Chen, 2022. "Travel time reliability in transportation networks: A review of methodological developments," Papers 2206.12696, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2022.
    10. Jenelius, Erik, 2012. "The value of travel time variability with trip chains, flexible scheduling and correlated travel times," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 46(6), pages 762-780.
    11. Bellei, Giuseppe & Gentile, Guido & Meschini, Lorenzo & Papola, Natale, 2006. "A demand model with departure time choice for within-day dynamic traffic assignment," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 175(3), pages 1557-1576, December.
    12. Li, Zhi-Chun & Huang, Hai-Jun & Yang, Hai, 2020. "Fifty years of the bottleneck model: A bibliometric review and future research directions," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 311-342.
    13. Robin Lindsey, 2004. "Existence, Uniqueness, and Trip Cost Function Properties of User Equilibrium in the Bottleneck Model with Multiple User Classes," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(3), pages 293-314, August.
    14. Jou, Rong-Chang & Kitamura, Ryuichi & Weng, Mei-Chuan & Chen, Chih-Cheng, 2008. "Dynamic commuter departure time choice under uncertainty," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 42(5), pages 774-783, June.
    15. Bhat, Chandra R. & Sardesai, Rupali, 2006. "The impact of stop-making and travel time reliability on commute mode choice," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 40(9), pages 709-730, November.
    16. Li, Baibing, 2019. "Measuring travel time reliability and risk: A nonparametric approach," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 152-171.
    17. Anthony Ziegelmeyer & Frédéric Koessler & Kene Boun My & Laurent Denant-Boèmont, 2008. "Road Traffic Congestion and Public Information: An Experimental Investigation," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 42(1), pages 43-82, January.
    18. André de Palma & Claude Lefèvre, 2018. "Bottleneck models and departure time problems," Working Papers hal-01581519, HAL.
    19. Yu Nie, 2015. "A New Tradable Credit Scheme for the Morning Commute Problem," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 719-741, September.
    20. Fosgerau, Mogens & Engelson, Leonid, 2011. "The value of travel time variance," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 1-8, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:25:y:2013:i:c:p:210-221. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30473/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.